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Tony, who had already had a release on Chill Records with Blame (Murderin MC/Death Row) tells me that the day he went over to work on some tunes with Andrew, he just grabbed a handful of records from his collection and turned up brimming with ideas. "It was quite sampled based, I had a lot of hip hop and just started to collect the original breakbeats". Andrew was already an accomplished producer, releasing quality techno on Chill Records and it's sister label Up-Roar under the names Rotor, Campher & Menthol, and the aforementioned Terra Incognita. He recalls "Tony had a great collection of hip hop vinyl, so we had a ton of great samples to hand. Our “Concrete Jungle EP” as Justice & Mercy was a huge hit. We took some pretty big liberties with sampling other work, but everyone was doing it. The sampler was king. Rather than hook up MIDI equipment, I would just borrow synths and drum machines off friends, and sample the sounds I liked. It wasn’t as flexible as having the real equipment, but it was a lot less hassle. I’d do anything to avoid having a tangled mess of cables everywhere. I can’t remember exactly what I’d sampled, but there was definitely a Roland SH-101 in there somewhere".
The main sample in 'Sooth My Soul' was 'My Love' by Collapse which Tony bought in Soul Sense Records in Luton back in 1991, and he was just itching to flip it into a jungle tune. The vocal in SMS was from 'Shelter Me' by Circuit. "The whole tune just came together. All the samples just worked and we did it in one session, though Andrew would of had to work on the mix afterwards to get it right" Tony muses. Andrew continues "I initially had mixed feelings about Soothe My Soul. It’s a great track, one of my all time favourites, but it was very sampled loop heavy, which is something I’d usually tried to avoid. It was all written on the EPS, and it really came around because Tony found the amazing synth and vocal break and adding the “Soothe My Soul” sample just finished it off nicely! It still sends tingles down my spine 27 years later, and I consider it the best track Tony and I did together. It was one of those tracks that just fell into place. It’s always nice when that happens! One of the interesting things in the track is that a bug in the EPS sequencer timing produced an interesting side effect. The bug affected the duration of notes randomly, as the EPS was not very precise. The lead instrument had a bit of noise after it, that should have been truncated off, but on some of the notes, it played a fraction of the noise, creating what sounds like another deliberately played instrument behind the lead sound".
The EP went on to become a huge release at the time and cemented the names of Justice & Mercy into the heart of the emerging jungle scene. Both EPs were caned at all the biggest raves across the UK through the summer of 1992, appearing on mixtapes from all the big players and energising ravers the length and breadth of the country, as Andrew fondly recalls; "My favourite ever event was Fantazia: One Step Beyond in Donnington, back in 1992. I think there were more than 25,000 people dancing in a field, and this one was actually legally organised. The atmosphere was electric, and to top it off, the second from last tune of the night played was one of ours, “Soothe My Soul” by Justice & Mercy. I was right at the back, on a small hill, watching 25,000+ people going crazy to one of my tunes. You can’t beat that!"
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- Genre
- Jungle