Sorted - DB and Dara bring the old skool vibe back (2002)

 Sorted

Village Voice, 2002

by Simon Reynolds

In the UK, rave nostalgia is old enough to warrant nostalgic pangs itself. For years now there’ve been acid-house flashbacks, Back To ’92 hardcore nights, and recently even Back to ’97 (speed garage’s annus mirabilis) parties. Hosted by original junglist DB and drum’n’bass selecta Dara, Sorted was Manhattan’s first proper dose of old skool rave retro. At this dummy edition of what’s intended as a regular monthly, an astonishingly fervent crowd (many doubtless veterans of DB’s pioneering NYC rave party NASA) packed out Bar 13, lured by the slogan "come feel that vibe again".

"That vibe" being the starry-eyed and virginal euphoria of a culture at its glorious dawn, an eon before its degeneration into the numbingly professionalized leisure industry of today. 1988-92, the period from which DB & Dara cherrypicked their relentless onslaught of classics, is rave’s "Sixties". 1992-97 would be its "Seventies" (fragmentation, darkness, aesthetic bloating versus strategies of renewal-through-reduction) while ’97-to-02 is clearly the Eighties (irony, self-reflexiveness, revivals galore). As with the original 1960s, during rave's youth it seemed like the well of killer tunes would never dry, like the culture would just keep on hurtling forwards forever.

"Music From London, Manchester, and Chicago" was the promised menu, but the last two got pretty short shrift. (If you crave that baggy beat, better hope the Madchester-retro party Hacienda, recently deactivated, finds a new home). London’s breakbeat house and jungalistic hardcore ruled the night. Rave’s own internal logic of intensification seemed to pull the deejays towards 91/92 and keep them there, at that explosive brink where hip hop met Italo-house met techno met Jamaica in the supercollider of mass MDMA madness. "E’s Not Required This Time" winked the flyer, but it was true: this music triggers the serotonin gush all by itself . Of course, it doesn’t hurt if you have memories of all-night frenz-E burned into your nervous system, like this crowd evidently did.

Recollected in tranquility, two patterns emerged. One was the absolute centrality, in this supposedly future-fixated music, of a 19^th Century instrument, the piano. Tonight we heard track after track based on the plangent elation of major-key piano vamps. From Manix’s "Feel Real Good" to Awesome 3’s "Don’t Go", we were blessed by a cornucopia of keyboard riffs poised between sublimely simple and ridiculously inane. 

The other thing that stood out was a melancholy sense of 1991-92 as a lost/last moment before the rave diaspora; before the tempos and intentions of the nascent subgenres (jungle, trance, gabba, purist techno, etc) fatally diverged. Back then, a single set could comfortably comprehend Felix’s gay nu-NRG thump, SL2’s hyper-skank, the sneaky slink of Jaydee’s "Plastic Dreams", Human Resource’s infernal blare, the serene bliss-waves of Jam & Spoon’s "Stella", Eon’s proto-darkcore, and more. DB and Dara took us back to a time when the center still held. They’d have to be crazy if they don’t make Sorted a regular thing, and you’d have to be crazy to miss the next one.