The Comedy of Errors: Depth Charge - Daughters of Darkness (9 May 1992)

Buy this on Discogs

A week ago, I talked about Invasion of the Bodysnatchers style horror being set to music, and now here we are again.  But while the punky thrash of Half Japanese’s UFO Expert had its roots in the musical past, Jonathan Saul Kane’s Depth Charge project was creating a musical future in what would become to be known as Trip hop.

In 1992, we were still some way off recognising this as a musical genre in its own right and venerating Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky et al, though Peel had been giving exposure to tunes which with the benefit of hindsight can be seen as laying the foundations for the 90s most intriguing musical development, such as Smith and Mighty’s Too Late.  Daughters of Darkness, which takes its name from a 1971 Belgian horror film that happened to turn up in Danny Peary’s fabled Cult Movies 2, is a bit of a game changer.  Since 1989, Kane had been ploughing a furrow of mixing together long sound samples from exploitation films with breakbeats and deepened sound through a series of 12-inch releases through Vinyl Solution.  Tunes like Bounty Killers and Goal were frothy and brilliantly silly.  Packed with samples from spaghetti westerns and South American football commentary, they invited listeners to get up and dance but with a touch more discernment than would be found within the acid house or nascent drum ‘n’ bass scenes. They’re light and don’t quite fit, but they’re clearly pointing the way ahead to something different but unformed. 1990’s Dead by Dawn gets a little more serious, starting to push the vibe away from the dance floor and into the listener’s head.  The sound becomes stretched, more languorous and dreamy, though with an abrasive edge.  By the time Kane reached Daughters of Darkness atmosphere started to trump energy and the abrasive had become decadently seductive, like its vampiric inspiration.  With its whispering synths, suffocated strings, heavy snare drum thump and sensual samples, Daughters of Darkness opens a door through which others would, in time, stampede.  But when the history of Trip hop is written, I hope it includes a chapter on Jonathan Saul Kane and the compilation of his Depth Charge Vinyl Solution singles, Nine Deadly Venoms.

Video courtesy of VinylSolutionRecords.