3. Ed Rush & OpticalWormhole
This is a really significant album, and it changed the face of drum & bass when it came out in 1998. For me and my crew, ‘Slip Thru’ was the tune we would hear on the radio. I remember being in Telepathy at The Temple in Tottenham hearing it and seeing the dancefloor pop off. That whole album was so forward with this future funk sound.
Nowadays most of the drum & bass you hear is either cheesy jump-up and progressive shoegazing, or the big room stuff that sounds like what Ed Rush & Optical were doing on this album two decades earlier – that’s the impact it had. Unfortunately, I don’t think drum & bass has progressed any further than that. Even the deeper tunes that weren’t the really big ones, are still tunes. There’s a warmth to the production and its really sci-fi sounding.
