The First Chapters

We Say...

Review by Anna Fielding

Although these days XL Records is more famous for solid album acts like the White Stripes and Adele, the label found its feet amongst the white-label vinyl and dew-covered grass of the rave scene. Now, after almost twenty years, the label has rounded up a selection of the tracks that got them started.

Back in the day, XL specialized in records made for the night. Rave was the sound of young British evenings and had even started to colonize the Top 40. All three of the SL2 tracks collected here charted, with “On a Ragga Tip” hitting No. 2. "Kicks Like a Mule" went Top 20, and the Prodigy became one of Britain’s biggest bands.

For a party genre, rave was often especially nasty. It was music for the bug-eyed, the sweat-prickled, the jaw-grinders — it was bare-bones, with the skeleton of beats and bass exposed and looping manically. The fragments of melody were meagre and samples flared with ghostly oddness at the edge of hearing.

The one exception here is Liquid’s “Sweet Harmony,” which, borrowing from the more refined sounds of piano-house, manages to be bright-eyed and fluid as clear honey despite its crunching breakbeat. But even the dark side had immense energy, a joyful forward rush. Just listen to the fierce exuberance of the Prodigy’s “Everybody in the Place” or the pleasurable, nerve-jangling sense of potential rejection captured by “The Bouncer.” Jonny L’s “The Ansaphone” shocks you into laughter at his Jack-the-lad callousness: the main sample is a telephone message left by his crying ex-girlfriend. To compound the insult, he stretches and distorts her voice: “You’re such a bastard and a liar!” she sobs over speeding rushes of cold synthesizers. You have to agree with her, even as your mouth twitches into a smile.

With two Prodigy tracks and three by SL2, there’s an argument that this compilation could have been both longer and more varied, but XL has pulled together an interesting selection, neatly capturing the early '90s period before club life went mainstream, when all were happy to dance through the dark.