JD Twitch’s Beats soundtrack brings the rave era to life with a mix of formative Detroit cuts, massive hands-in-the-air trax and choice modern numbers

There was this track on a tape that somebody played me at karate camp when I was a teenager. It felt like a breakthrough moment, as if I had been wired up to the future and it was eviscerating my here and now. The track deployed a sample, something about an exorcist. Not sure if I ever knew who it was by. That’s besides the point I suppose, as over the years it took the form of a just-out-of-reach idea from my earliest days of house and techno. Every so often it would spring to mind – a vague rave phantom peering around the corner of my subconscious – as a marker I was content to leave as is. More recently I attempted to examine the memory, extract some meaning and maybe even find out what the music was. Even with the internet, this track wasn’t easy to identify, since my information was scant. Perhaps part of me didn’t want to know; demystification can be one of the great disappointers. I think I might have stumbled upon what it was prior to revelation – a case of the wrong mix, minus the tell-tale sample. But then, finally, I struck electronic gold and, surprisingly, hearing it again didn’t disappoint. Having identified that track from that tape as “The Exorcist” by The Scientist on Kickin Records, I stumbled upon a 12” copy in Reckless Records. The universe was trying to tell me something. Or at least it had put the need-to-know me of now in contact with my go-with-the-flow early nineties self; a dialogue was opened and dancing ensued.

Within this context Brian Welsh’s Beats arrived at exactly the right time. But it goes beyond just me. There’s something in the air and it isn’t simply nostalgia. Rave has unfinished business and it also has something to communicate about what’s happening today. This is particularly evident in Jeremy Deller’s magnificent documentary Everybody in the Place: an Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992, which draws significant links between the miner’s strike, the rave movement and even Brexit. It’s at once sobering contemplation and galvanising energy flash. Beats is a fine fictional counterpart. Set in West Lothian in 1994 at the tail end of rave, it’s a coming of age tale and social document. The film is thankfully worlds away from the almost unwatchable post-Trainspotting look at club culture, Human Traffic. There’s plenty of humour in Beats, but it is never at the expense of naturalism and the film has an easy, convincing flow. The Criminal Justice Bill and its war against events featuring music “characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats” is the evocative backdrop. But where Welsh resoundingly succeeds where others have failed is in the depiction of and relationship to the music. Whether that’s a character dancing about their room to a belter of a track or a group dropping Es and dancing at a rave, it all feels lived, authentic. The vitality of the music is successfully communicated through the medium of cinema, which is a rare feat indeed.  

The key ingredients to achieving this sense of thrilling rave realism are JD Twitch of Optimo as music director and the staging of an actual rave to be captured on film (which Twitch also djed at). Twitch’s choice of music went through many iterations, but what he arrived at in collaboration with Welsh perfectly balances formative Detroit cuts, massive hands-in-the-air trax of the day and a sprinkling of modern electronic transmissions – for the smart decision was made to go for vibe rather than slavishly adhere to historical accuracy. Twitch also brings more esoteric choices to the table, Optimo deep cuts that elevate the mix further. Beats is lovingly curated instead of cynically thrown together, which makes for an exhilarating experience that generates the good kind of familiarity – like the meeting of old friends – and surprises in just the right ways. The soundtrack also, significantly, hangs together as true to the story that is being told. Twitch is careful not to dig too deep and go off the tracks. I mean, as much as I admire the soundtrack to Morvern Callar, it always struck me as misrepresenting what music would’ve been playing at the parties that Morvern goes to. Waay too try hard; less kosmische cool, more rigorous repetitive beats were required.

So there’s the classy, enveloping living machine music of 69’s “Desire” and Model 500’s “The Chase”; the room-shaking dub-heavy progressive house of “Song of Life” by Leftfield; the giddy piano stabs of Outlander’s “Vamp” and coming-up-never-coming-down acid throb of “Energy Flash” (both absent from the vinyl); the out there Balaeric banger and Optimo club anthem “Stand on the Word” by The Joubert Singers. “Dominator” by Human Resource pulls at my core – taking me back but also pushing me into a lost future. Its apocalyptic hoovering, clanking alarm bell and insistent declaration that “I’m the one and only dominator” is a serious aural palette cleanser. I’ve listened to Optimo’s 2001: An Espacio Odyssey mix CD so many times that when I hear Liquid Liquid’s “Optimo” I expect it to segue into “All Over My Face” by Loose Joints – that it doesn’t here makes absolute sense of course, but try telling my brain that. The all-time peak time “Anthem” by N-Joi is a joy to re-experience, its piano and vox simultaneously massive and boiled down. Luma’s “John Broadwood” (a 2013 Optimo Trax release) flows beautifully out of the N-Joi number. Its sleek Detroit future groove, insistent piano stabs, hint of R&S proto-trance and almost-resigned call to “Sing a song of happiness” makes it feel like the perfect period piece while also providing connective tissue to the present. Which is what the film as a whole manages to achieve through the non-linear and mood-capturing moves of Twitch’s lovingly judged rave soundtrack.  

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Stewart Gardiner
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