What should we do about the Likely Lads?

Where were you in 1997? I was in secondary school. For me, the turning point in my love of Drum & Bass came in the late summer/early autumn of that year, with the arrival and massive cross-over success of Reprazent's New Forms LP. That album busted my head wide-the-fuck-open, and I spent a lot of time trying to understand the techniques used on it (this was a massive challenge for a kid with an Amiga 1200 and OctaMED Pro).
However, the real turning point for me with D&B came in the September of that year, when I first heard this tune:


(excuse the lions and cheetahs, but this was the only video I could find with the tune)

Ed Rush & Optical - Funktion. From that moment on, I was what I would learn in 2005 was a neuronerd.
I'd heard some of Optical's prior work, like To Shape The Future and Grey Odyssey, and been blown away by it. I think everybody was, to be honest. Ed Rush's solo work, I hadn't heard a great deal of. I must confess, I was a little wary of the sheer hardness of No U-Turn's sound. Considering I now think of it as one of the defining D&B labels, I was clearly full of shit. When I did get around to checking his pre-Optical hookup work (please don't bombard my comments with mentions of his engineers, I know the stories), I found a richness of Hip Hop-infused, skunked-out, stripped-down, bass weight. The URL of this blog is no accident, let me tell you!



But bollocks to all that nostalgic, geek trip-down-memory-lane stuff. Let's fast-forward a little...

So, Ed Rush & Optical hooked up, made some tunes for Metalheadz, Prototype, V, started their own label, put out a slew of singles and two amazing albums, one passable one (yeah, I said it), one god-awful one (yeah, I fucking said it!), and then started what could be termed a return to form with Travel the Galaxy. Here's the thing though... I don't think this is where they should be.

Considering what they started, the artists they inspired, they should be on a par with the likes of LTJ Bukem, Bryan G, Goldie, Andy C as scene figureheads. Why? I'll tell you why...

Between them, Ed Rush & Optical started a musical revolution. OK, so Dom, Nico, Fierce, Trace, RymeTyme, Matrix, Stakka, K.Tee and Skynet all played a role in that, but if you ask the Young Turks of the Neurofunk scene, they almost universally agree that Wormhole was the point at which they fell in love with this strangely captivating synthesis of Techno, Funk and Drum & Bass. In short, it was their Timeless. Had those two not been introduced by Dom Angas (as in Dom & Roland), there'd be no Noisia, maybe no Black Sun Empire. And though I'm not a fan, no Pendulum. Think about that for a minute. The Drum & Bass landscape would be vastly different. Save for maybe the fallout from Bad Company, but that's another story altogether.

The cut-and-thrust of this post is, Ed & Optical should be focusing on growing Virus as a label, a business, and a home for like-minded artists. Bottom line. I'd rather see them take their label (and distributor, Devilfish) forward, fostering fresh talent grown in the fertile soil they laid down 13 years ago than playing catch-up to young upstarts. Not that there's anything wrong with the young upstarts. I just think mentorship from the guys who started the whole shebang should've been a part of their induction to D&B.

So what should we do about the Likely Lads? We should encourage them to put more time and energy into giving the newcomers the kind of support they need. Because the next generation of D&B heads need that same rawness I enjoyed in my late teens and early twenties.