Featured Mixes: Bailey's 1xtra Ed Rush & Optical Dubs Mix (Part 3)

Here’s a nice little piece of mixtape goodness I found online a couple days ago! Drum and bass fans worldwide know full well about DJ Bailey and his longterm gig he’s had repping the music on the airwaves in the UK on Radio 1. Because he plays such a high profile role in this position, dnb producers give him access to a wealth of their personal work (much of it forthcoming or never getting released) in exchange for helping them get heard on the radio.

Bailey has been notorious over the years for doing mix shows dedicated to playing entirely unreleased songs by the likes of Calibre, Photek, Dillinja, and Ed Rush & Optical. Much of the music these artists created during the most productive parts of their careers was before the heyday of the Internet and online networking, meaning the songs never even existed digitally in the first place. They would get recorded to a DAT cassette, which the producer would take to a cutting house and have 1 or 2 dubplates cut of it. And that was it, no other copies would exist anywhere else, unless another DJ was lucky enough to get a chance to borrow the DAT and make a dub themselves of it!

That being said, Bailey has done a good job over the years getting in touch with many legendary artists in the UK and being granted access to these unreleased dubplates and DAT’s. He did 2 mixes of Ed Rush & Optical’s late 1990s work already; one in 2005 and one in 2006. Three years later, Bailey has dug deeper than ever before, going straight to Optical this time around and unearthing a few songs that have never even left his studio in the process. This mix is the result.

It’s great to hear many of these tracks for the first time; much of the personality that is shown in their well known work such as the Wormhole LP are present here. I especially like the track “What’s The Difference”, with the almost atmospheric pads gently drifting over a no-bullshit 808 break that manages to still sound squeaky clean even on a crusty worn out dubplate. I’d rather hear it like this than not at all! There have to be about a million mixes floating on dub of Sonar too, but every time I hear a different one or alternate take there’s always something subtly different about it that makes me go back to the history books and re-examine how much of a seminal piece of work it was to this music.

Bailey’s 1xtra Ed Rush & Optical Dubs Mix (Part 3)

Optical: Untitled
Ryme Tyme & Optical: Untitled
Optical: Untitled
Optical & Fierce: Weapon
Ed Rush & Optical: To Shape the Future VIP
Ed Rush, Optical & Fierce: Red Floor
Optical: What’s the Difference
Optical: The Stab
Trace: Sonar (Ed Rush & Optical Alternative Mix Version 2)