In 1989, former Clock DVA member, Paul Browse, moved to Berlin. There he teamed up with Aussie Johnny Klimek, to form Effective Force. The duo’s debut release was Diamond Bullet. They signed the track to Mark Reeder’s fledgling MFS label. An imprint that would soon become synonymous with 90s trance. Home to big-selling artists such as Cosmic Baby, Humate, Paul van Dyk, and The Visions Of Shiva. Effective Force would soon start to produce uptempo numbers themselves, but Diamond Bullet, was a darker, moodier offering. A bridge between Browse’s industrial past and the pair’s rave new future.

Essentially electro, backed up by some badass rumbling bass, the piece is characterised by its samples, lifted from Francis Ford Coppola’s Joseph Conrad-inspired Vietnam War fever dream, Apocalypse Now. A careful edit of Colonel Kurtz’s key monologue, concerned with judgement, mortality, and the conflict that exists in every mind, between good and evil (1). With eerie introspective piano and sinister orchestral strings providing further accompaniment, it’s like a mix of In The Nursery and Beat Club’s sleazy Security, with a little of the skeletal freestyle found on Canadian imprint, Big Shot, stirred in. The E.P. features 4 slightly different versions. Nighthawk, for example, is beatless, but not bass-less, and spooky. Ridden with ethereal spectres. There’s also an instrumental, for those that can’t handle “the horror”, which is a far easier ride for those chill out / comedown moments.

I first heard Diamond Bullet when Andrew Weatherall played it during his Kiss FM residency in 1993. I was high and alone at 2 in the morning. One hand on a tape deck pause button, the other pouring a glass of cheap wine. On a school night. Telling myself that if I got 3 or 4 hours sleep I’d be fine for work. This was back in the daze when I’d smoke a spliff on the walk in, but before I’d lace a joint with coke for the journey home.

I’d returned from uni, but mum had left, and it was only a matter of months before dad kicked me out. My long-term relationship was also about to hit the rocks, crash and burn, and my own inner conflict was exacerbated / exaggerated  by my increasingly chemically altered state. So when Martin Sheen started muttering “I`d never seen a man so broken up… ripped apart”, and Effective Force looped the line “He broke from them, then he broke from himself” into a final chorus / coda / mantra, this obviously struck a chord with muddled, addled me, and the tune went straight to the top of my wants list (2).

NOTES
(1) The same Marlon Brando speech is referenced in Jah Wobble’s 1990 set, Without Judgement.
(2) I secured a copy pretty easily in Soho’s Sister Ray Records, while searching for other Weatherall-recommended “funky alternatives” by Throbbing Gristle and Chris & Cosey. When I heard it on the radio I assumed that it was some lost `80s post-punk nugget, but it was actually released in 1991. Diamond Bullet was later comped, on Guerrila, by Dean O’Connor, who ran the club nigth Sabresonic with Weatherall, and Paul Byrne, now of Test Pressing.

Effective Force’s Diamond Bullet has very kindly been reissued by Transmigration.