Storm EP – The 4th Dimension – Released Liquid Records, April 6th 1994
The Storm EP is a four track debut release from the 4th Dimension, one of the earliest pioneers of Irish electronic music.
The group consisted of four brothers from Kerry in the west of Ireland who began putting on rave events and later formed a group which became the 4th Dimension.
Storm was their breakthrough track, a tongue-in-cheek slice of rave sleaze sampling a 16-bar snippet of the song Blackbird by Irish traditional music star Sharon Shannon.
Though meant as a throwaway novelty track, it helped gain the group exposure and airplay which, in turn, broadened their fan base. Bolstered by gigs supporting international artists, most notably The Prodigy, the group quickly became legends for all us baggy trousered young ravers on the Emerald Isle.
If you’re not from Ireland and/or below a certain age you’ll probably have no idea who these guys are. But if you remember Naff jackets and Petro Motion jeans but can’t remember what happened yesterday except that “it was raining probably”, then no doubt you have fond memories of Ireland’s fantastic 4.
Maybe not all the tunes, maybe there’s huge gaps in the memories but for sure you’ll remember loud thundering beats and lasers and mad Moss O’Leary, with his comical Curehead hairstyle flipping and flapping around the stage with maniacal energy, Keith, Leeroy and Maxim all rolled into one.
Suffice to say my first “rave” experience was me and a mate going off to see these guys live, despite being underage. What gormless fools we were and what an eye opener it was.
Four To The Floor
Of course the rugged “kingdom” of Kerry is as far from the interconnected London rave scene as it’s possible to get, which explains why the group’s sonic pallet is so different.
You don’t get the Roland drums or chopped up breaks, and, with no peers to speak of, I imagine there was a lot of guesswork involved trying to emulate certain sounds and percussive patterns using the various samplers and keyboards they had available.
Similarly, the fact that the group consists of four brothers, each with distinct personalities, explains why the 4th Dimension’s musical output varied as wildly as it did, from introspective melodic pieces to full-on rave cheese and, later on, a sound that veered further away from UK sounds towards more Eurocentric gabber.
This musical divergence is already apparent from this release which consists of two versions of Storm (the radio version and extended version) plus two additional tracks in between.
Honestly, I’ve not listened to this release in years so this is going to be interesting.
Let’s start with the main track, Storm and get it out of the way first, in all its diddley diddley ravey glory.
Let’s Begin…
The band got sick of this track and it’s clear to see why. It’s a gimmick track, making use of a Sharon Shannon accordion piece with a cheesy “woohoo!” thrown in for good measure.
Keep in mind this was post-Charly so we’d already been subsisting on a saccharine diet of “rave” remixes for a few years now with shit like Sesame Street, Rhubard & Custard and Tetris, so when an Irish group decided to do it and throw some ceol in the mix we just went with it.
In fact I vaguely recall seeing some girl doing ceile dancing to this, which is something you’re definitely not going to see these days if you go to see Kerrie or Sunil Sharpe.
The intro has atmosphere and hihats are ok but already something’s off about the drums. Ditto the rave stabs and Korg presets… “woohoo!”
And here’s Sharon…
Oh no, this one’s not aged well at all. I still love the scratchy middle section but on the whole nostalgia can only go so far.
That said, the start-stop-start nature of this track means a 30th anniversary EDM remix would probably do well in the charts and I hate myself for even contemplating that but we can’t control the thoughts we have, only our reactions to them… ok that’s enough, come on 4th Dimension I know you’re better than this…
Fresh Air is exactly that, a breath of fresh air to reduce the heartrate, with a reduced tempo and some cool melodic interplay.
And when those string chords come in… ah yeah that’s the stuff!
Again a lot of this sounds like default presets, I’m looking at you Korg M1…
I found this on the Overground album also, lots of high energy gabber adjacent stuff I loved as a teenager whereas the melodic tracks had a longer shelf life and seemed more influenced by the likes of Orbital.
Full disclosure I’ve not listened to this tune in at least 25 years and, for whatever reason, it gives me really strong Depeche Mode vibes – which might explain why I’m enjoying it so much.
Yeah, I’d forgotten all about this track and now it’s going to be playing in my head all day.
Finally we have Out Of Africa, a nice upbeat tribal number with an African chant which now makes me vaguely recall having an argument as to whether or not it said, “party on, party on”, an argument which I’d forgotten about until just this exact moment but which was the yanni/laurel of its day.
… Ah yeah this one!
The percussion’s much better on this one and there’s a clear Prodigy influence here, especially on the main riff. This influence also extends to the drums which have more breaky syncopation than I normally associate with the lads…
Actually I’d completely forgotten about this one and I’m currently bopping away. As I do, long-buried memories are wending their way through the fog of my mind, memories of me as a teenager in oversized baggy jeans (as was the style at the time) dancing like an absolute tool to this at one of their early gigs. This may or may not have been the last track, but I do recall the crowd going absolutely mental to it.
A massive sea of frenzied legs and flapping X-Worx (Google it) jeans. Party on! Party on! Stop saying that you gobshite. Etc.
Dimensional Intruders
We didn’t have much in the 90s in Ireland, certainly not where dance music was concerned. So thank fuck for the 4th Dimension.
Much as Scary Eire done with hiphop, the 4th Dimension enjoy that place in history as being trailblazers, the first to break through and let a whole generation know you don’t need to be from London, Berlin or Frankfurt or wherever, the windswept Wesht of Ireland would do… as long as you have the tools and the talent and the perseverance, you could build your own local scene… so we did.
Of course to get there we had to make something “Irish” and do it the only way we knew how, throw some diddle dee shit in the middle (the kind the Yanks like) and let it off into the wild. But what of it?
Through this prism the movement gained acceptance, allowing the music to break though. The ultra-conservative Irish media were quick to latch on, this rave music craic’s big in other countries so now four lads from Kerry are having a go and they’re fusing it with traditional Irish music so it can’t be all that evil after all…
Cheesy though it was, Storm was a battering ram. With an unstoppable horde of baggy lunatics behind it.
Sometimes it’s hard separating nostalgia from the reality. In this case it’s actually worked in reverse.
Deep down I knew Storm was naff at the time, but it didn’t matter. It dropped at a transitional stage in my musical journey, still loving the rave and the hardcore, but actively looking for something more.
What I hadn’t expected was that I’d love the other two tracks so much 30 years on, which shouldn’t have surprised me because I know these guys created some gems.
We wouldn’t have gone so mental back in the day otherwise.
And thanks to their success and the example they set, countless budding young DJs and producers decided it was their time have a go.
And that’s the 4th Dimension’s legacy right there.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that every electronic act in Ireland today owes these lads a debt. The 4th Dimension done it first. They kicked the door down for other Irish producers to follow.