Pressure Drop - 'Tearing the Silence'

This is all about one track for me - 'Up Against the Wall'. It's a bad-ass piece of electronic instrumental hip hop, with a couple of vocal lines sampled over it. It's atmospheric, funky and moody, and contains the shouted line 'up against the wall, motherfucker'. It's a line that still makes me smile, for two reasons.

Wall of Sound were a really cool label at the of the 1990s, and they did a DJ session on Radio 1 as the Wall of Sound Allstars. They played this track, and knowing that they'd been naughty using profanity on late-night radio, turned it into a cheery singalong of 'up against the wall, up against the wall, up against the waaall motherfaahckerrrr'. Maybe they were trying to demonstrate that if you keep repeating profanity, it loses its sting. Or maybe they were just drunk. Either way, it was pretty funny.

The other reason it sticks in my mind is that when we were working on the Overseer album 'Wreckage', Rob wanted to use that vocal sample, but clearance being what it was, Rob elected to 'recreate' it, getting Ricky Wilson (now of Kaiser Chiefs but then in local hopefuls Parva) to record 'us against the world, motherfucker'. I'd totally forgotten that until I listened to 'Wreckage' the other day.

The other memory it brings back is DJing with Moose (Paul Curtis) at the Elbow Room in Leeds. He was (and probably still is) a really good DJ, and I was grateful that he shared his deckspace with me. Now he's doing Symbollix - proof that the cream always rises.

Catalogue Number: HAND024T

Tracks: The Calling. Masher. Part 13. Tearing the Silence. Up Against the Wall. Torn Beats. Call to Mind