Rhythmatic - Beyond The Bleep FLAC download

A fascinating glimpse into a stillborn album project for Rhythmatic. It's a shame this material never saw the light of day, but in may repsects it is easy to see why. The early Rhythmatic singles were groundbreaking, classics even; following from Mark Gamble's pioneering work in artists like T-Cut-F and Krush, they were part of the vanguard of the development of the UK sound, combining Detroit techno, bleeps and soundsystem-influenced bass. But the scene moved very quickly and some artists got left behind. The very "electronic" sound that Rhythmatic and others such as Rob Gordon typified was rapidly joined and then eclipsed by breakbeats and harder european sounds, while house went off in the strings and vocals direction. The tracks that appear in snippets on this sampler generally lack the cutting-edge quality of the earlier singles, but also failed to keep up with the evolving sound. The last minute or so of the first track is a notable exception and it is a real shame that this beautiful track was never released in full. The vocal track "Radioactive Love" that forms the first half of track 2 has promise but somehow feels contrived as the combinations of tapping electro-techno beats, soulful vocals and samples never quite gels. Only Nugroove survived as a promo-only single and later as a track on the "Energy on Vinyl" EP, and while that particular release attempted to emulate the faster rave sounds, even that was playing catch-up, and while some of it sounds neat today, it sounded out-of-place at the time.