SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2ND 2002, ECHO CLUB, 22H, DAMPFZENTRALE BERN, SWITZERLAND

A NIGHT OF DUBBED BREAKBEATS AND DUBHOUSE WITH:
PRESSURE DROP (UK) DJ SET, SUPPORTED BY DJ DUSTBOWL (100 MOUTHWATERING MENUS INC.)

"Step aside all Pretender, this sound is taking over."

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Let's go back2back. Back to the basics. Before UK garage, trance or even acid house it it comes to that. Contrary to popular belief, British dance music didn't start with ecstasy and repetitive beats. Pressure Drop's roots stem back to a previous era, to rib-quaking dub at smoke-filled blues dances, with scratchy rare groove and Hip-Hop amongst the debris of the original warehouse parties. When illegal raves weren't some glamorous ideal, but a week by week reality. When pirate radio didn't mean mobiles and UK garage, but radical rebel music. Battles fought and won over the airwaves from the tops of tower blocks and darkened basements. Pressure Drop have paid their dues and now, as James Brown would say, it's time to get ready for the big payback.

Pressure Drop's fourth album Tread travels at the speed of thought from the time honoured sound of police sirens audible outside a reggae dance to booming junglist Sub bass, distorted breakbeats and twisted hip hop. All on the same track.Tread encompasses years of life lived on the fringes, of DJ ducking and diving in and out of radio Stations, clubs, parties and recording studios, armed only with a bagful of vinyl, a sense of history and an expansive imagination. It's the sound of UK hip hop learning to live with underground dance. Of inner city torch songs that make as much sense whether you're an old skool funkateer or a school age UK garagista that's just bought his first booming system. It's the sounds of inner city Britain circa 2000 and it's set to blow up.

Dave Henley and Justin Langlands grew up in different ends of 1970s London: Dave falling for the funk and reggae from a council estate in Croydon. Justin submerging into music at Holland Park comprehensive school where children from different ethnic backgrounds and classes absorbed the sounds of the golden era of black music and the nihilistic altitude of punk.

"We're not just into black music," says Dave, "just music that satisfies our soul." That's the music that spoke to us and helped make us the people we are," acknowledges Justin. "You can't help but reflect that when it comes to making your own music."

The pair didn't meet until the best part of a decade later, introduced by mutual friend and underground DJ Paul Guntrip, behind the decks of the then cooler-than-thou Wag Club in 1986. The night was called Heavy Duty and for a few years, Wednesday nights meant Dave and Justin, playing alongside Guntrip, were dropping a diverse heavyweight selection. "We had live sets from the Stereo MC's, London Posse and Jungle Brothers, amongst others," recalls Dave. "No other clubs in central London were mixing it up like us." "Things weren't as musically segregated then as they are now," adds Justin, "early acid trax were played next to James Brown, Go-Go alongside Marshall Jefferson and film soundtracks collided with Hip-Hop."

1990 and, following the Sampladelic house of the early Feeling Good [still sought after and changing hands for up to £20 amongst canny DJs] Dave booked up with Justin to make Back2Back. In those House dominated days, the resulting tune sounded radical: orchestral hip hop soul soaked in the heavy manners of roots reggae, while their friend Afolabi sonorously intoned an anti-racist speech [lifted from the writings of the Black Panther's Minister for Information Eldridge Cleaver]. "It summed up the way we felt," says Justin. "About how a generation of white youth had emerged who had a different attitude towards, racism, towards black people and towards society in general. It was a blueprint, a statement of intent." lt's also been a mainstay of Coldcult's DJ sets for the last decade now. Pressure Drop were on their way.

Two albums followed, 1991 [Upset] and '93 [Front Now], both were only released in a rather more forward thinking Germany. "It was very frustrating not having our records released in our own country," admits Dave. But while they received cult acclaim in Germany, in a Britain high on the rave wave of house music, their mix of reggae consciousness, hip hop vibes and deeply researched breaknology was to prove only prophetic. A skinny 18 year old called James Lavelle, working in Portobello Road's jazz and soul shop Honest Jon's imported a few hundred copies of Upset, and sold them to like-minded souls. Later he would freely admit they made a big impact on him when he founded his own Mo'Wax label.

Increasing numbers of people were listening: friends and fellow dub aficionados Leftfield had been checking their releases and asked them to sign to their Hard Hands label, where the cult Tearing The Silence EP [1995] introduced Dave and Justin to a whole new scene firing up on skunk weed, jungle and slo-mo beats. A deal with Columbia's Higher Ground led to the dark but critically acclaimed album of optimistic urban torch songs that was 1997's llusive.

And so on to Tread. Recorded after the duo upped sticks and left their beloved London for the "big skies" of Brighton, it's a more mature album, but still a smiling, dancing blues party on disc. "I know an album every two years or so doesn't seem too prolific," Justin laughs, "but we put a lot into it. It might take you two years of listening to it to strip away all the layers and spot all the influences and nuances." That's the way it is with Pressure Drop. This isn't the low attention deficit blipvert world of rave culture. This is roots and culture.

Tread points the listener in new and different directions, to music's past with fresh ears, while at the same lime keeping an eye focused on the future. Featuring the silky smooth voice of Martin Fishley, the frantic flow of MC Skibadee and the angelic tones of Vanessa Freeman against a backdrop of real strings and vibrant percussion. It gives respect to the legendary producer Mikey Dread, then acknowledges reggae's sound system style of mashing up the version excursion with Rhudeboy Rhapsody. It's an album entrenched in the traditions of hunting for breaks, or roasting to the b-sides of reggae sevens. But it's also fractured, distorted modern dancehall business, taking time out for twisted free jazz and soul-rending ballads like Promises. "Songs are important to give people a chance to communicate," Justin expands. "Lyrics and music can prove to he a potent combination for dialogue."

The mix of old and new, of raw emotion and clinical science fiction sound manipulation will be familiar to veterans of Pressure Drop's long running radio show Radio Sputnik. Broadcast throughout the mid to late 90's on the Sky/Astra satellite, it saw Justin and Dave forge the sound you can bear now on Tread. "Dave would go and find the latest Jamaican pre's. We'd play all the dark drum & bass we were failing in love with, as well as all the British hip hop and weird breakheabs we were coming across. We used to trigger off sampled jingles and effects, dub up the tunes and create an audio atmosphere from out of space and in your face."

Welcome back Pressure Drop, soundboy take cover!

"This is a Pressure Drop style, we move forward all the while."

Pressure Drop Website