Rob Birch of Stereo MC’s remembers a love for rap and sampling fuelling him and fellow member, DJ Nick Hallam’s excitement about starting a band together. Albums by Public Enemy and other hip-hop artists saw them set aside all they had learnt about making music via guitars to become disciples of breaks and loops. By the time the ‘90s came along, they were carving a space for themselves making what would soon be called dance music, with their third album, 1992’s Connected, achieving a high water mark in their discography.
A success internationally, the Mercury Prizenominated album boasted four Top 20 UK singles: the title track, “Creation,” “Ground Level,” and “Step It Up.” The gloriously irresistible “Connected”— which would appear in the 1995 film Hackers, starring Angelina Jolie and Jonny Lee Miller—was the biggest of the four hit singles.
It kicked off with a purposefully indistinguishable sample that Birch reveals was from a Pink Floyd song that they went to great lengths to obscure by recording and re-recording on different synthesizers. Then the unmistakable “aye aye aye”
