T/S: Tricky Disco vs I Want To Be a Hippy

Both an attempt to make pop hit from a minor electronic dance trend. Tricky = Bleep rave and Technohead = Dutch Gabba. Bleep over Gabba any day.

was there a "Smurfy Disco"?

Someone had the bright idea of doing "Hippy" as a infant school end-of-year show, lots of kids in kaftans, wigs and comedy spliffs like Jimmy Saville. There was outrage. It sound awesome...

Actually, to my ears it sounds like an overdubbed demo by the Raincoats...

These are both great, obv. And whilst I lean towards the lush bleepiness of "Tricky Disco" I'm thinking that the gleeful appropriation of Gabber on "Hippy" deserves its own love too. Unfortunately the long mixes of "Hippy" that I've come across tend to bury the cartoonishness in some boring polite Techno.

weird timing. there's an article in the new mojo that arrived yesterday re tricky disco.
not read it yet.
oh, and my vote goes to the bleep of course.

Yeah, I saw that. Played the youtube, don't recall it at all!

Tricky Disco. I loved bleep techno when I was about 9, and bought Tricky's follow up single, House Fly on 12". Unfortunately my copy had a big gluey scratch on it which also appeared on the replacement copy, so I didn't keep it. Never mind. Think I Wanna Be A Hippie came out a bit later on and I felt above it. Marrow Marrow.

Smash Hits printed the lyrics to Tricky Disco:

Woo yeah x16
Tricky Disco
Woo yeah x 8
Tricky Disco
Woo yeah x 8
Tricky Disco

Back in the 90s I would've been mortified by this thread and voted Tricky Disco to the death, but now I'm thinking Technohead win

this may just be because it is a nice sunny day, and to me I Want To Be A Hippy is a sunny day record and TD is a dark warehouse night record

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzGPNi-8fAY

tricky disco by several miles.

i shd have queried how many people know these are both by the same people?

i think i knew that.

A friend of mine tried to start a rumour that Autechre were the people behind Jive Bunny. Don't think it stuck, sadly.

Hah, I heard that rumour as well, 10-odd years ago. Wonder if we're thinking of the same person (NB - can't remember who it was now).

Maybe I'm remembering wrong, and he heard it from someone else. My friend was (is!) called Tom, think he has been on ILX in the past.

xposts I know that now but I didn't find out until Lee Newman died and I was pretty amazed to read her bio

(though my timeline is a bit confused here, as I think ...Hippy was only a hit posthumously, and by the time I read the article I had already come round to liking it, which took me a while)

i'm not sure when Lee died compared to "Hippy"'s original release. only found out the story years later. both of these tracks are straight-faced massive works of genius imo

Lee Newman appeared in quite a few guises... Think I once had a gabba comp called Bloody Fucking Hardcore that was made largely of Newman-related stuff.

love the moment when the breaks come in on Hippy (and the video makes that moment even better)

it is pretty weird to contrast the ice-cold minimalism of Tricky Disco with the sheer busy-ness of Hippy: fat drum machine kicks AND manic rolling breaks AND little offbeat stabs, prolonged snare rushes, etc

(admittedly in the mid-90s it was both technologically easier and more fashionable to have a lot going on at once, but TD seems very minimal even by 1990 standards, and I think there's sometimes a kind of rhetoric about electronic music that people go one way or the other and never cross over)

the difference is "taste" i think which is repellent and what made me start the poll. these are both perfect exemplars of...something cool.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

"You'd need an IQ of about 6 to enjoy this" - my mum's view on Technohead

Unfortunately the long mixes of "Hippy" that I've come across tend to bury the cartoonishness in some boring polite Techno.

Have you heard the original long mix of "Hippy" (not the one they used in the video)? That's pretty much straight gabba.

I've always really like the wee harmony on Mari-marijuana!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Technohead still going strong in 21st century