Shades of Rhythm
Pioneering dance songwriters whose 90s classic The Sound of Eden became the massive 00s single Everytime I See Her when covered by Positiva act Another Chance.
If 808 State were The Beatles of the early 90s techno explosion then Shades of Rhythm were surely the Rolling Stones. Or maybe it's the other way around - 808, like Jagger and Richards have soldiered on for decades, whereas Shades lasted for just a short, explosive and highly influential time.
Their story starts in Peterborough 1988 with Lanx, Nick Slater and Rayan Gee meeting for secret jam sessions in a TV repair shop. When Rayan got a DJ residency at local club The Attic the trio began performing live, even before they'd chosen a name for themselves.
"In those days, we had aspirations of being as important to dance music as The Rolling Stones were to rock," remembers Rayan. "At the time there wasn't an established dance act in the UK, it was simply a question of charging into the charts (if you were lucky), and then adding your name to a long list of one-hit wonders. We wanted more for Shades Or Rhythm, we wanted to be respected both on stage and on vinyl…"
S/O/R's first release - the Just Feel It 12", which they'd recorded at Soundspot Studios in Bedfordshire - appeared on Stevie V.'s Beat Box Records. But they released its follow-up themselves - the massively influential Frequency which contained raw versions of bleep-electro-classics like Homicide and Exorcist. "We had no idea what people would think to our music," they later said, "we just loaded (my car) up with 1000 records and hit two towns, London and Manchester. First stop was Mash in Oxford Street. The guy behind the counter took one listen, looked up and said 'leave me 100 and save me another 100'…
Shades then wrote a stream of classic dance singles, completely side-stepping rave's cheesy, sample-driven novelty singles in favour of a unique disco/electro/techno collision. First up, Homicide/Exorcist in January 1991 then, in April, Sweet Sensation and, that August, the #35 hit The Sound of Eden and Armageddon.
By the end of that year S/O/R were at number 14 in the UK singles chart with Extacy, their debut album, Shades had sold over 50,000 copies and they'd also remixed the era-defining Set You Free by N-Trance. All these records were supported by live appearances at legendary 90s raves, like Technodrome and Fantazia which audiences often topping 10,000.
The band's next two singles went underground. Fear of the Future - a mesmerising dark acid set - turned into the b-side of their next single Happy Feelings. They pushed the rave feeling further into new territory with Sweet Revival and the soulful His Mix/Her Mix face-off of Getting Away.
Shades also regularly appeared on some of the major dance compilations of the day, like Deep Heat, Total Science, Cream Live, Hard Fax, Essential Hardcore and ZTT's own Zance. And their music is regularly licensed to Old School and Rave compilations in the 00s.
