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Yorkshire Bleeps And BassYorkshire Bleeps and Bass or Yorkshire Techno is a rather clumsy term for an early 1990s musical genre that up until recently didn't really have a name. At the time just called plain old techno, it was a short-lived and very localised musical movement centred on the cities of Bradford, Leeds and Sheffield, in the counties of West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire, northern England, in 1989-1991. The sound was characterised by harsh, funky minimalism, speaker-breaking sub-bass and electronic bleeps or other futuristic sounds. Unlike the present-day English techno scene, this early Yorkshire movement was inner-city, multi-racial and aggressive, and went on to influence groundbreaking London breakbeat acts such as Shut Up and Dance and The Scientist and later jungle, which upon listening today it shares many similarities. The first record of the genre was probably "The Theme" by Bradford's Unique 3 in 1989, although Leeds outfit LFO's "LFO" was being played on white label at the Leeds Warehouse for several months before being released on Sheffield's Warp Records in 1990. Leeds's Nightmares on Wax next realeased "Dextrous" on Warp Records in 1990. The label went on to release the club anthem "Testone" by Sweet Exorcist (DJ Parrot, and Richard Kirk of Sheffield avant-garde experimentalists Cabaret Voltaire), a track that went on to define the Yorkshire sound, and also the rather silly "Tricky Disco" by Tricky Disco. These were followed be a string of releases on the short-lived Leeds label Bassic Records, including the awesome "Ital's Anthem" by Ital Rockers, a Chapeltown dub reggae band diversifying into techno, and Juno's "Soul Thunder", an understated track now recognised as a techno classic. With Nightmares on Wax's "Aftermath", released on Warp records in 1991, the scene peaked. "Aftermath" now sounds like a blueprint for jungle music, and was very ahead of its time. But the music scene in England was changing, as piano house anthems took over northern clubs and the breakbeat hardcore scene grew in London and the West Midlands. Bassic Records folded in 1991, taking most of their acts with them, though Ital Rockers went back to the Leeds dub reggae scene in the mid 1990s. LFO, intelligent electronica producers at heart, released one last Bleeps and Bass anthem "We Are Back" - probably the genre's last track - in 1992 before going on to a successful career in techno. Nightmares on Wax abandoned house music altogether, going on to make cut-up, instrumental hip hop, and were described by Mo Wax Records's James Lavelle as a big influence on the 1990s trip hop scene.
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