Music : Old Skool House, Acid House, Old Skool Hardcore, Detroit Techno and Acid Techno
OneTrackPresents & Subject present...
ALTERN 8 [Old Skool DJ Set]
Choice Kollektiv DJs
& Guests
Saturday June 27th 2009
Zoo Club, Parliament Street, Kilkenny
Adm: e10 [Bus from Dublin e22 - includes club entry]
Doors 10pm
Come with me tonight's the night! Saturday June 27th Zoo Club, Kilkenny embraces the old skool for a night of full on masked hysteria. Powered by one of the seminal UK dance acts of the 90's - Altern 8! For their first show in the city of cats Altern 8 will step back in time for a musical journey into the chronicles of rave culture - 1988 thru' 1992 with a soundtrack of uplifting anthems and breakbeat belters. Note: Strictly old skool DJ set. Only for the headstrong! Hardcore you know the score! Ok, we'll stop now, you get the idea. ;) Support on the night comes from local crew - Choice Kollektiv and special ravetastic guests to be announced. Smiley times guaranteed. Get your rave on! This is the moment you've all been waiting for...
Altern 8 - An introduction...
Altern 8 consists of two producers Mark Archer & Chris Peat. They originally started out as Nexus 21 [and apparently before that they were deck chair salesmen or something?] as a pure techno act, but they decided to produce Hardcore & Rave under the name Altern 8.
They decided that although rave music was meant to be danced to not looked at, that live PA's should entertain the crowd - hence the chemical warfare protection suits and yellow masks! Their first E.P. The Overload E.P. had a distinct techno feel to it, but their second E.P. The Vertigo E.P. took on the sound of the breakbeat hardcore sound. This was released in 1991. This quickly became a massive rave anthem, the title tune Infiltrate 202 is still a massive crowd pleasing tune in old skool raves today. By some [lucky] mistake the record managed to get just outside the top 40, and of course Altern8 decided it would be foolish not to try and knock it up few places. Some rubbish about disco biscuits and an air horn was created and The Sun printed it! This of course was enough to tipple the tune into the top 30. However it was the follow up Activ8 which really took off.
Mixing breakbeat, with hardcore rave rhythms and that famous 'Top One Nice One Get Sorted' sample, Altern8 produced definitely one of 1991's best tunes, which probably everyone remembers. It summed up the happy rave scene perfectly in every way. This was then followed up with the hardcore classic Frequency which I think was recorded in the famous 2:30 AM rave in Shelly's car park. Altern8 only produced 10001 copies of this record and allegedly burnt the master tapes - [see The Scams]. By now Altern8 were a household name [well if you're front room is full of techno records!]. In another dodgy stunt, they decided to decided to distribute free Christmas puddings to the poor from a hot air balloon, all with the words 'The Poor Know The Score' on them. However the dea was shelved when someone who was less pissed noted that Christmas puddings arrive like scuds from 2,000 feet in the air!
More publicity, and the ever increasing popularity of rave culture, made sure that the further releases Evapor8 and Hypnotic St8 [sampling the Nexus 21 release Self Hypnosis] became massive rave tunes. Coupled with more publicity stunts, this saw Altern 8 become huge, doing live PAs everywhere!! They also did remixes for the likes of Phuture Assasains, Blow, Inner City, Suburban Base and more. But as some DJ's slagged off rave for being apparently cheesy, the popularity of rave culture seemed to decrease and it went back underground, which would explain why Altern 8's Brutal8E and Everybody took on a less 'ravey' feel, being given jungle treatment by Two Bad Mice & Suburban Base. Everybody was Altern8's last release in 1993. Due to money troubles, Mark and Chris split up. Mark Archer went on to form Slo Moshun a house act with Danny Tarus. These days Mark Archer works under the name Mr Nex with Rennie Pilgrim on a breakbeat label and also runs a studio...Chris runs a local PC firm. Every once in a while they dust [to pardon the pun] off the masks, the boiler suits and their record collections to treat you, the public to a night of full on
masked hysteria. Saturday June 27th at Zoo, Kilkenny is one for the diaries...
Get Yo' Rave On!
www.discogs.com/artist/Altern+8
www.myspace.com/subjectevents
www.bebo.com/CHOICEKOLLEKTIV
www.onetrackpresents.com
www.maskhysteria.co.uk
www.subjectevents.com
Bus / Travel info: Limited bus [from Dublin] spaces available - e22 [includes club entry]. For full details / to reserve seats, please mail: info[at]subjectevents[dot]com OR onetrackpresents@gmail.com