I had a question mark next to this when I added it to the long list of selections from this show, but its place on the metaphorical mixtape was never in doubt once I established which version of Whurlstorm - out of four different mixes - Peel had played on 14/5/93.
Whurlstorm first surfaced as the flipside to the first Turbulence release, Whurlwind. Issued on Industrial Strength Records, it was essentially a slightly sped up version of the one that Peel played on this show, which was the lead version on a trio of mixes which were put out on Super Special Corp, the label that put out the rest of Turbulence’s releases during the 90s.
What makes Whurlstorm essential is that it’s one of those techno tracks where its highpoints really stand out when they arrive. Dance music is built on mythology and hype, and for all the talk about laying down the groove or setting up the beat, so many dance tracks are a series of longueurs, interspersed with moments of extreme, ecstatic activity designed either to get you busting a move if you’re on the dancefloor or looking up in interest and exhilaration if you’re sat listening to it. Such is the case here, where after 35 seconds of low key beats and bleeps, we’re thrown into something which sounds like processed turn-table needle scratching fed through a wah pedal, but done at such speed and with such musicality, it makes you immediately want to start breakdancing to it. It crops up again at 1:34.
But as with a soukous track, it’s the final 2 and a half minutes that contains Whurlstorm’s true ace. You’ll hear throughout the track treated vocal cries of Whurlstorm and Yeah, mixed in such a way to make them sound like they are being growled by a subterranean monster. From around 3:34, that monster makes its presence known. Firstly, there’s a descending line of sound which sounds like power circuits running down. Then at 3:45, there’s a brief bit of white noise which evokes birds flying off into the distance, just the way that they do in nature when they become aware, often ahead of man, that a natural disaster is about to happen.
And then, from 3:55, it strikes. Imagine if the pulverising, juggernaut bassline ripping through the earth in Humanoid by Skyflyer - played by Peel almost a year before this programme - had laid an egg. Now, a year later, that egg hatches a full size monster, rearing up and destroying everything above it. The final two minutes encapsulate a sense of disorientation, destruction, panic (represented by a couple of returns for the breakdance music), before ultimately ending on a note of calm after everything has been razed to the ground.
This mix of Whurlstorm is known as A1. Of the other two mixes of Whurlstorm that came out alongside it, I’d recommend B2 on the grounds that if A1 deals in destruction, then B2 concerns itself with rebirth and reconstruction. Its relentless beat and throbbing synth-line evoking a community fixing its buildings and its spirit after the monster has gone.
Video courtesy of Les Enfants Terribles.
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