'Ardkore, you know the score!

[face of glass]

How come no one ever talks of Stevie as the queen of early '90s British rave?

With its rough-cut breakbeats and grainy low-resolution samples, this London-based 'ardkore was a reprise of Shut Up and Dance's urban realism, but stripped of overt politics or hope. It was music for ravers who knew the rave dream was a lie, but carried on taking the bad medicine. Noise Factory's "The Fire" twisted Stevie Nicks's mystical FM-rock classic "Sara" - "said you'd give me light, but you never told me about the fire" - into the plaint of a neophyte raver whose insides blaze with the scalding bliss of an unusually pure Ecstasy pill. (Simon Reynolds: Generation Ecstasy, pg 138 [Routledge, 1999])

'Ave a listen, it's much more subtle than whatever Lindsey produced!



We need more discussion on the "artist as manipulator" Stevie instead of the auteur Stevie that everyone seems to focus on! I'm waiting for David to step in with his superior knowledge of the era.