Pearsall's Tunes

Surgery - Cybersurfin - This is taken from Sharkey's mix on Bonkers 5, so right at the start of this mp3 you get the last bit of 'Mind Launch'. As far as I know, this track has never been released, but it's an awesome one. Hustling percussion, twisting 303's, then into the breakdown. The main riff is giant, emotive, block-like. All hard right sonic angles over the seething undergrowth of the track, the acid line and the little arpeggiated riff that twist and move as the main riff marches rigidly forward.

Drumhead - Hygiene - The Finnish sound (big up Teemu Lahtinen!). No messing about with bassless intros, this starts straight off with that bouncy off-beat bass and snapped-on percussion. Little fragments of sound come in, like a hiccuping R2D2, then they are joined by a larger riff that sounds like a parrot squawking through a tracheotomy box. A third element is introduced, an underpinning sound like a rattle in a washing machine as heard through a seashell. Then the break, which introduces a delicate little plinky-plonk melody, a refugee from Europop past, which beeps and boops over a melancholy synth wash. It builds for a bit, then it drops back into the beat, but without the melody, just the harsh sounds, before slowly reintroducing the melodies. In a club this is that moment when the energy shifts upwards, as the melodies swell over the toughness. This is what the Finns do so brilliantly, they layer the tracks so thoroughly and yet so cleanly. It is the final realization of the potential of mid-90's Goa trance, where there were all kinds of layers yet they often worked against each other. The Finnish sound, on the other hand, has multiple layers to unpick and yet everything makes sense in its place, everything is where it should be.