This 1990 video game tune sounds a lot like early grime
It played during the boss level of 'Wolverine'
Despite widespread belief that Youngstar's 'Pulse X' is credited as the world's first grime track, it seems that we may have been mistaken, as a video game instrumental from 1994 bears an uncanny resemblance to early grime music.
Brixton producer Sirpixalot rediscovered the track last week, which soundtracks a boss battle from 1994 video game Wolverine: Adamantium Rage. It was written by producer Dylan Beale, who was part of a 1990s jungle duo named Rude & Deadly that were responsible for some rare, sought-after tunes like 'Mash Dem Down'.
Unsurprisingly, when Beale was contracted by game developer Akklaim to compose music for the game, he balanced his influences.
"To make the bass sound like it did I had to use Cubase to get any kind of echo and reverb in there," Beale said in an interview with SBTV's Paul Gibbins. "The sample is just one bass thud, so I had to program millions of different bits in. When I was doing that I wasn’t thinking of hip hop, I was definitely thinking about hardcore, where we’d take reggae music, put it over hip hop beats and speed it up to 140bpm and riff from there. It was a really exciting time before the lawyers came in around ’95 to 96 and stopped the sampling, which resulted in the sort of polished hip hop sound you have now."
Since its resurgence in popularity, the video game track has become the subject of more than a handful of edits and remixes.
Listen to the track below.
[Via: SBTV]
Neal Rahman is Mixmag's Los Angeles Digital Intern. Follow him on Twitter