Four years ago, Paul Woolford painted himself into a corner. Under one of his many aliases, Special Request, the British producer released a striking debut album that captured the golden age of UK pirate radio and rave culture as though preserving it in amber. Soul Music pilfered the drum breaks, bass weight, and manic energy of jungle wholesale, folding each component into new yet strangely familiar shapes. As much an homage as a high-definition update, Soul Music helped revitalize that beloved music for contemporary dancefloors. And in doing so, it defined the sound of Special Request in no uncertain terms.
The years after Soul Music saw its influence proliferate, but Woolford became more interested in poking at the walls of the box he had built around the project. On 2015’s Modern Warfare EP trilogy, outsized piano house began to color the music’s edges. Those tracks still centered on booming low end and half-remembered ecstasy peaks, but something about Soul Music’s single-mindedness had felt more genuine, purer. The dilution only continued. Earlier this year, the Stairfoot Lane Bunker EP shifted Special Request’s agenda, aligning it with classic electro and experimental ambient alongside the usual rave sounds. More recently, the Curtain Twitcher 12” saw Woolford’s encroaching acid tendencies steal the spotlight in lieu of jungle references.
Belief System, Special Request’s second studio album, completes the process that began not long after the release of Soul Music. It’s a record crammed full of contrasting ideas and mish-mashed nostalgia; it’s also absurdly long, with 23 tracks clocking over 100 minutes. If Soul Music and Modern Warfare were quaint in the way they got straight to the point and then relentlessly hammered it home, Belief System’s prolonged, shapeshifting arc could be taken as another tweak to the project’s formula. But the the individual tracks often don’t measure up to the album’s inflated ambitions.
Three distinct movements comprise Belief System, and if you blur your eyes a bit, they take on a conceptual slant. In its first third, the album digs into acid house, breakbeat, techno, and IDM, seamlessly interconnecting each style. The midsection is Special Request at its rudest, rowdiest best: a tear of jungle permutations on par with Soul Music’s strongest tunes. The final stretch, which takes up nearly half the album's length, is full of garish incidental music and beatless sound manipulation. Taking the album’s title into consideration, these three parts seem to represent a sort of holy trinity for the UK hardcore continuum—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Sure enough, the latter manifestation is the least substantial. “Carex Vesicaria” is undoubtedly an affecting elegy for the death of rave, as is the angelic euphoria of “Witness.” But tracks like “Transmission” and “Reckoning” are bombastic and painfully linear, better for a summer blockbuster trailer than any album of throwback dance music.
In addition to their unflattering bloat, the last nine tracks are a symptom of a larger issue: pacing. The warning signs come early with “Chrysalis,” a needless, sentimental intro that foreshadows the lack of editing to come. Woolford stays in warm-up mode until the seventh track, when the Aphex-inspired “Curtain Twitcher” launches an excellent run of 130-plus BPM bangers. The bin-busting “Scrambled in LS1” stands among Belief System’s best, though it’s practically unrecognizable as Special Request, sounding more in line with the menacing electro of Gesloten Cirkel’s Submit X. When “Make It Real” kicks the rave into high gear with a cheeky backspin and some of Special Request’s signature MC chat, the record finally reveals its beating heart. The Vangelis-like emotional climax of “Light in the Darkest Hour” feels like the record’s natural end. That it takes over an hour to get to this point, and that it’s followed by 30 minutes of aimless (albeit well-crafted) sound design, is emblematic of Belief System’s shortcomings.
In March, Woolford released his first commercial mix as Special Request. Fabriclive 91 was a skillful and stylistic tour de force spread across 30 tracks spanning from Drexciyan mainstay DJ Stingray and Richard D. James’ Polygon Window alias to drum ’n’ bass legend Dillinja and classic junglists the Rood Project. Six new Special Request tracks were peppered across the mix, linking the project’s expanding aims to the intertwined old-school threads. The approach made for a mix that felt equally cumulative and cohesive. Belief System attempts something similar with its slick blend of genres, seamless transitions, and gradual escalation, but it overshoots the mark. Part of what made Fabriclive 91 such an engrossing listen was its agility and streamlined energy. By drawing out the minutiae of Belief System’s rigid conceptual framework, Woolford loses the spontaneity and audacity that made this music so thrilling in the first place.
