Review Summary: The name is really everything it means, at once. Landmark drum and bass record.
Did you ever experience the feeling that, while listening to an album, immersed in the music, you weren't thinking anything and, in fact, did not
have to think anything because the music was somehow replacing your thoughts and simultaneously translating or mapping them? And that you'd be entirely happy to continue having your thoughts and the music merge into one, your cerebral activity just 'being' that music? But then it also hits you: what does that say about my thoughts and mindset? In particular, why am I so comfortable with my brain twisting and speeding like a renegade droid in an escape pod gone berserk somewhere in the voids of outer space?
As more than a few listeners will agree, the darker styles of drum & bass are an exceptional musical fit for sci-fi themes and atmospheres, especially the more gloomy, brooding and apocalyptical ones. Ed Rush & Optical's
Wormhole undeniably is one of the albums that does that best. From the ominous beginning tones of
Mystery Machine onwards, the producing duo will have you hooked, or at the very least intrigued, with some the heaviest bass lines ever (see esp.
Splinter and
Millennium), up-tempo snares and scratchy grooves (
Slip Thru,
Compound,
Fixation), and an array of instrumental and vocal samples throughout, used sparingly enough to give the impression of minimal tweaks for maximum effect. Tracks like
Glass Eye and
Dozer still connect with the dub and reggae roots of drum and bass, while
Point Blank and
Compound mix elements of ska and funk, giving them a heavy futuristic twist. The main mid range guitar-like sample in
Compound is one for the ages, together with its pounding bass lines. As stardust sparkles through the title track
Wormhole, the sound of the album also seems to reach the peak of its maturity (if something like electronic bass riffing exists, it’s on this track), and the journey your ears have been taking reveals itself as one that translates intergalactic shortcuts to synapses in the microcosmic realm of the brain. The closer
Lithosphere, then, forms the short but necessary ambient decompression.
Alien, otherworldly, eerie, relentless and infectious are all predicates that fit the musical vibe of
Wormhole equally well. The tunes are irresistibly funky in some kind of deranged way, bursting with dark attractive energy. In hindsight, there could not have been a better time slot than 1998, pending Y2K, to drop this aural bomb of millennial anxiety and anticipation. The album captures that feeling and historical moment perfectly, but also continues to convey it as a timeless experience. There’s plenty of background and analysis to read on the internet: on how
Wormhole hit and changed the face of drum & bass, instantly making it fashionable far beyond UK club culture; on how its stylistic leap from the jazzy and ethereal to the relentless and dark single-handedly initiated and installed the subgenre known as Neurofunk; on how its militant drum tracks and bass lines had a significant hand in winning over fans of metal to electronic music; etcetera. You will also have little trouble finding all the nerdy technical specs: on how the album retains the ‘warmth of older pre-PC production’ as it was made on ‘outboard gear’; on the arsenal of studio equipment used (including the whole range of Boss guitar effect pedals); on the quality of the drum samples (half of which being the artists’ original recordings of drummers); and whatnot. But the year is now, and the fact is:
Wormhole still hits the spot.
In short, landmark record right here.
An added word on D’n’B release formats may be informative. Full-length cd releases by drum and bass artists usually include a second cd with a continuous mix of the tracks of the album. My advice is
you need to hear the continuous mix cd for this as well as other classic releases in the genre, as much as you need to hear the individual tracks in their entirety. It will give you a genuine flavor of the musical intent and purpose of the tracks as embedded in D’n’B club culture – that is, so to speak, of their real biotope. There is a reason why an individual drum and bass track averages 6-7 minutes in length and why it is released on 12’’ vinyl: it’s typically meant to be spun on turntables and DJ-mixed with other tracks, the middle 3 minutes constituting the real ‘body’ of each track. The
Wormhole mix cd contains an additional five tracks; and its central 10-minute stretch from the title track over
Medicine to
Compound is sheer carnage.
