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New Forms

Electronic / Drum and bass & jungle · 1997

New Forms

Roni Size / Reprazent

Why listen

Recorded instruments and edited voices become parts of the same ensemble inside finely divided breakbeats.

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Tracks · previews

English editorial edition

Album story

Brown Paper Bag makes bass a recognisable character rather than an anonymous foundation. Around that character, the drums move at a different scale. When the title track follows, a voice changes the focus again. New Forms is especially inviting at these intersections between instrumental identity and electronic construction.

Released in 1997 by Roni Size and the Bristol collective Reprazent, the album offers more than a long succession of dance tracks. This presentation follows the original UK double-CD programme: thirteen tracks, then nine. The short Railing opens onto the extended Brown Paper Bag and New Forms, while later changes between singing, rhythmic patterns and brief linking pieces keep altering the proportions.

A recording becomes playable material

Size recalled recording bass with Si John and acoustic guitar with Steve Graham for Brown Paper Bag, then arranging the sounds across his keyboard. That process places instrumental performance and electronic organisation inside the same musical act. A recorded gesture remains recognisable while becoming available for a different construction. The listener can enjoy the bass’s particular character without treating the programmed framework as merely an accompaniment added afterwards.

Different spaces for voices

Onallee appears in the licensed vocal credits for Digital, Heroes and Share the Fall’s Full Vocal Mix. Those songs give the first disc several routes through vocal material rather than one repeated song shape. Beatbox then supplies a much smaller interval before Morse Code and Destination. Attend to these changes of proportion: a brief track can redirect attention just as effectively as a long arrangement can sustain it.

The second programme matters

A short Intro leads into Hi-Potent, Trust Me and Change My Life. Share the Fall appears again in a version distinct from the first disc’s Full Vocal Mix, before Down, Jazz, Hot Stuff and Ballet Dance complete the original programme. Returning to that second sequence prevents one famous bass figure from standing in for the whole collective. The album becomes a set of related approaches to building music, with different contributors, voices and instrumental gestures occupying the foreground in turn.

The album through its tracks

Compare the instrumental character of Brown Paper Bag with the voices on New Forms, then find both album versions of Share the Fall.

  1. Brown Paper Bag

    The second track gives its memorable bass figure approximately 9:04 of album space. Size’s account of recording Si John and Steve Graham before arranging their sounds is a useful route into its mixture of instrumental personality and electronic design. Shift attention between bass and drums: they suggest different sizes of movement within the same span. This selection is the original album version in the 2017 remaster, not the later Full Vocal Remix or 2017 Remix elsewhere in the collection. Rather than simply counting returns of the familiar figure, notice the room around it. Continue into New Forms, where the presence of voices changes the focus of the programme.

    Reference · Future Music / MusicRadar — Roni Size direct track-by-track interview, 2013

  2. New Forms

    Bahamadia features on the third track, approximately 7:44. Size later described reconstructing the vocal in his sampler, making editing part of the relationship between speech and rhythm. Listen to the units in which a sentence moves against the smaller divisions of the drums, without trying to guess the location of every edit. Onallee also appears in the licensed vocal credits, so the track contains more than a single vocal presence. The selection is the remastered original album recording, distinct from the Krust and 2008 remixes included later. Following Brown Paper Bag, it extends the question of how recorded material can become the fabric of a new arrangement.

    Reference · Future Music / MusicRadar — Roni Size direct track-by-track interview, 2013

Listen next

Continue with Goldie’s Timeless to compare another extended drum-and-bass album’s treatment of space and singing.

Timeless ↗
References & editorial note

Written for English readers. Album facts are referenced below; listening suggestions are editorial interpretations. AI-assisted editorial review; not independently human-reviewed.