Optical - "What's The Difference?" - (6:56) 56 BPM
Ed Rush - "Medicine" (Matrix remix) - (6:10) 169 BPM
Review: What's the difference between a killer and one of us? We'll tell you; killers produce genre-defining weapons that are still in demand over 20 years later. Rated as one of Optical's best long lost dubs, "What's The Difference?" has such a perfect balance of shades and textures; at once disarmingly deep and brutally heavy it remains in a league of its own. Matrix's timeless remix of another chapter-galvanising era tune follows suit with a brand new remaster. Still as iced-out and pranged as it was in 98, this is a straight up history lesson of the future... And always will be.
Review: Yes: Ed Rush & Optical are still at it, almost twenty years on. The drum and bass vanguards still have it too, executing their darkside futurism and bass science on the underground. The sick laboratory experiments are documented in all their perverse glory on No Cure, their sixth album on their very own Virus Recordings imprint. The title track (featuring the rhyming talents of longstanding collaborator Rhymetyme) comes tearing out of the speakers like a dark horse galloping through the dark. The jittery "Falling Down Stairs" trips all over itself but with such grace; its breakbeat finding itself and locking together again with the bass eventually. But if you ask us, it's all about tracks "Angry Birds" and "Nemesis", true steppers which nail that classic Virus sound that still sounds as fresh as ever. Ed Rush & Optical: accept no substitute.
Review: A banger from 2003, this classic gets a huge rerub from London producer Prolix on Ed & Optical's Virus label. Already on top form after his Scourge EP, his take on "Get Ill" is just what the doctor ordered - a huge and hectic killer that adds gliding synths by the bucket load to make it an absolute destroyer. Backed up by the Dyke and the Blazers-sampling "40 Channels of Funk", this is yet another essential slice of Virus.
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