- Sneaker Social Club declares allegiance to "UK rave old and new," and the label's recent output has zig-zagged energetically between the two. Etch and West Norwood Cassette Library made hearty throwbacks to breakbeat hardcore's heyday, while dons of the era 2 Bad Mice produced shockingly good new work on last year's Gone To Soon EP. A reissue of a '92 classic, The Brothers Grimm's "Exodus (The Lion Awakes)," came with remixes from hardcore lovers like Special Request and The Maghreban.
The label's latest riffs further on the theme. The story goes that its producer bonded with Sneaker head Jamie Russell over "a shared love of 2 Bad Mice and Moving Shadow." By this label's standards the EP's period echoes are oblique—here a diva sigh, there a hint of a rowdy bassline. Dream Cycle also weaves in later UK sounds. The excellent "Dream 93" could almost be Pangaea in his UK garage days, were it not for the sepia chords and winsome birdsong.
Elsewhere, the EP's main rhythm tends to be house. At its most pedestrian ("Start While It's Hot") the effect is close to Lone's Ambivert Tools series. Most tracks are long and level, happy to wallow in a daze. The best offer more movement, reflecting the era's precipitous highs and lows, as when the paranoid "S.O.U.R." spills into the giddy euphoria of "Paradise State." The latter track features the EP's only actual breakbeats, filtered so that they flicker like mirages, and ends with a voice sighing, "I gotta find my way back…" But the EP isn't as depressingly nostalgic as that makes it sound. The ambient "Absolutely (Them + Us Mix)" is more affirmative than mournful, a dog-eared ode to loving and letting go.
TracklistA1 Dream 93
A2 Start While It's Hot
B1 S.O.U.R.
B2 Paradise State
B3 Absolutely (Them + Us Mix)