Narcotic Thrust

Narcotic Thrust brought together Stuart Crichton and Andy Morris. Their recording history includes Safe from Harm, with Yvonne John Lewis on vocals, before I Like It brought the project to a broader pop and club audience in 2004.

The music gives the voice a strong setting without treating it as an interruption to the instrumental. A sung phrase can become part of the track’s rhythmic identity, with its return doing some of the work another record might give to a new instrumental hook.

The original I Like It programme includes a radio edit, a full original, a dub and remixes by Dean Coleman, M’Black, Tom Mangan and others. The longer original and dub each run for more than seven minutes.

Those versions reveal the practical construction of the record. A short edit needs to establish the song quickly; a longer mix can make the preparation and the space between vocal entrances part of the attraction. The groove has enough definition to support both.

When the Dawn Breaks and Waiting for You extend the catalogue beyond its most familiar single. They make a useful next step for hearing the project as a body of vocal house recordings.

Begin with the radio-length I Like It, then follow it with a longer mix. The difference is more than duration. The same hook can feel immediate in one setting and become the destination of a patiently developed passage in another.