An absolutely fantastic release on the short-lived New York house label E Legal. Once again it's a Todd Terry and Zahid Tariq production, and once again the duo are in top form.
I think there are two really good examples of taking a vocal sample and cutting it up to create something new (and better). First off is Orbital's use of a reversed loop of Kirsty Hawkshaw taken from Opus III's "It's A Fine Day" to generate the spectacularly lush melody of "Halcyon".
And then there is "Hear The Music", which chops up a guy saying something to the effect of 'Hey buddy, do you do hip hop?' and builds a song around the variations. David Morales on remix duties probably didn't hurt either. Other releases added more remixers, but from what I've listened to on youtube they're pretty crap. All the gold is on this release folks.
"Bounce" is a solid piece of dark house music, perfect for a dingy basement club with only a strobe light to illuminate the dancer's gyrations. Both these tracks more than stand the test of time, and you could probably still play them to a house loving dance floor today and get a good response.
I bought my 12" after hearing "Hear The Music" on the excellent 1992 Sasha mixtape Magic Carpet Australia - bought whilst on one of my record buying jaunts in Sydney. Not sure how widely available the mix is, but I think I'll pull out my cassette deck one day and upload it.
A2 Hear The Music (Def Dub Mix)
B1 Bounce (Wild Warped Mix)
