If you type in Medicine 8 in an internet search engine, the second entry you will find is "Artificial Intelligence in Medicine". It's exactly where Luke and Liam May's heads are right now. Forever Haley Joel Osment in A.I - forever the boys trying to find the feeling and soul in dance music and worrying that the dance music they make can't convey true emotions. You see, Medicine 8 aren't your archetypal dance boffins who can tell a dance classic from a half bar intro. They spent their time growing up listening as much to the Jimi Hendrix and Stones as they did to classic acid house 12" mixes and are as a true representation of 2002 as you can get.

From simplicity comes madness and with the repetitive beats build and build while analogue bleeps jump from speaker to speaker and result in the most musical air raid known to man. Madness surrounds but it makes sense and like the Chemical Brother the ultimate joy is that one of discovery so classic dance structures are mashed up with the sounds of Dyson's and Washing Machine's, old skool Commodore 64 blips and bleeps and random statements which perfectly sum up our time fed a series of meaningless headlines such as as "Mystery Murdered", "Donuts Prozak" and "Ape Don't Kill Ape". "Even The Beetles, The Monkeys" tries to sum up a small take on their influences in just one sentence and gets as far as Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin before tailing off into a distorted mess.

At a time where club culture is at an all time low with the exception of a few superstar DJ's being able to make a sustainable living, it's going back to it's route of an underground youth movement to save itself phoenix like from the flames. Medicine 8 represent the ideology that dance music is about pushing things forward rather that sticking with the status quo and "Iron Stylings" is a journey through those times.

Alex McCann