Aww fah facks sake! I had skank & grime all over my Air-Max Huaraches!

I looked about, I had just recently regained my vision, Rhubarb n custards and Red Stripe had proper smacked me about: I had been seeing triple for at least eight hours previously, holding in-depth reciprocal conversations with furniture and wondering why everyone I could see was wearing black framed glasses. No more.

Shivering in my sweat drenched t-shirt I shook off the haze and searched out a bent ciggy from my pocket. The soundsystem was shimmering like a dream behind me, heat-hazed sound source drifting backwards in time whilst I strode ever forward. Walking out of the big double doors and turning into the bright white light I wondered where the fuck I was.
"Viva la sucre!" screamed someone. I jumped. Not The Fear, please no not yet.

This wasn't Essex and I'd travelled so far along the hardcore continuum I'd ended up in a gothic city in east-central France circa 2015.

Times are strange, I'd sailed a wave of rave euphoria right into the heart of Europe 20 years after the party was supposed to be shut down.

Hardcore will never die they said, perhaps the MCs were right after all.

Hissy analogue jams are all the rage right now indeed have been for some time but don't blame L.I.E.S. et al. blame Ableton and soulless minimal techno for pushing everyone so far over the edge even banging rusty spoons together sounds better than another Kompact release. Anyway someone is digressing: knackered house, destroyed techno whatever you want to call it, add in a smattering of breakbeats some jungle riddims and you're lounging atop the stratosphere of cool: men with moustaches and girls in big floppy hats will be all over you, your prized vinyl and that fucked up Roland you copped off Ebay. Which means that to stand out in this micro-scene of retro-looking, passive-aggressive socially sanctioned consumerism you better be genuinely good. Which shady French crew J-ZBEL, judging on the strength of this release most assuredly are.

Technology continues to obliterate time & space and nowhere is this more evident than on this record. J-ZBEL, with a penchant for neckerchiefs and mugshots containing attractive lazy-eyed young women scavenge their constituent parts from times & locales now past and far afield, but their exuberant re-representation can only be the web-informed global village of 2015. Side A holds a good old fashioned acid house workout, sitting somewhere between mid-80s Chicago and early 90s London all chugging acid bassline and broken beat rim shots bouncing off about everywhere. It's a raucous warehouse banger. The real piece de resistance however lies on the B side with the 'Poppers Mix', which as the title suggest contains a certain measure of chemical explosion, even in excess of that witnessed on the A. Fierce broken beats recalling a corroded Dillinger clatter about with some weird trembling synth adding contemporary colour and wonk; toward the latter half of the piece everything chills out as pads begin to wash in and the bassline subdues itself to a deep LTJ Bukem like throb: the chemical rush and the post-club come down, all in the space of five minutes, it's a pleasure to behold.

Brothers from Different Mothers is a small label operating out of Lyon, France, distributed by purveyors of hazy analogue quality, Syncrophone. Judging from their Soundcloud page BFDM look like they started out as a podcast series in 2013, though we don't really know because there's absolument rien about them on the webz. What we do know is that they've released a tape called 'Ambient Party Turns Into Orgy' and two absolutely stonking E.P.s of which 'How I Made My Mom & Sis' My Sexbot Slaves' is the second. We can't find either of these E.P.s anywhere, so if you find a copy or two please hit us up and I'm sure we come to some mutually pleasurable arrangement because we want copies for ourselves.