As the track crested, Reuben saw a guy in the front row stop dead. He wasn't tired; he was confused. He looked at the speakers as if they were speaking a language he almost understood. That was the magic of the track. It was uncomfortable. It was alien.
"Along Came Polly" didn't just become a hit; it became a pivot point. It proved that techno didn't need to be pretty or epic to be massive. It just had to be weird enough to stick in your teeth. And as the final notes faded out in Warehouse 9 that night, Reuben knew he hadn't just played a track—he’d let a monster out of its cage. Rebuke - Along Came Polly
Weeks later, the "Polly" fever began to spread. Pete Tong picked it up. Then Adam Beyer. Soon, the biggest stages at Awakenings and Drumcode were vibrating to that same unsettling bleep. Reuben sat in his studio, watching clips of 20,000 people losing their minds to a sound he’d created while trying to make something "a bit different." As the track crested, Reuben saw a guy
The strobe lights at Warehouse 9 didn’t just flicker; they sliced the air into jagged, monochromatic frames. Inside the booth, Rebuke—known to his mates as Reuben—watched the sea of bodies through a veil of sweat and artificial fog. He was halfway through a four-hour set, and the energy was reaching that dangerous, volatile tipping point where a crowd either transcends or collapses. That was the magic of the track
It was a pitched-down, distorted snarl, stripped of its original context and repurposed as a dark incantation. The dance floor, which had been a chaotic mess of flailing limbs, suddenly locked into a singular, robotic groove. The track, "Along Came Polly," wasn't a song you danced to ; it was a song that dictated how you moved. It was minimal, almost arrogant in its simplicity, relying on a weird, bleeping lead synth that sounded like a dial-up modem having a fever dream.
By the time the second drop hit—that hollow, echoing thwack that would eventually become Rebuke’s signature sound—the warehouse was no longer a club. It was an engine room. The track bypassed the brain and went straight to the nervous system.