Apollo 440 (Mode-esque synth pop, dodgy Blue Oyster Cult covers, the trancified 'Liquid Cool', glitzy-disco tributes to Gene Krupa, the brilliant Van Halen sampling 'Aint Talkin Bout Dub' then finally abysmal dub/rock/bigbeat bilge and remixes of bloody James' bloody 'Sit Down' - thats the last i heard of them)
Bizarre Inc. - wavy ravers with a triumverate of classic tracks (Such A Feeling, Playing With Knives, Raise Me) - then they went all poppy with I'm Gonna Get Ya, Took My Love, Keep The Music Strong, Surprise - all not too bad in fact. i think one of them went on to make big beat tracks as Sir Drew too...
Psychotropic - one big tune in the shape of 'Hypnosis' - very Balearic '91 vibe, would probably sound a lot better sped up to hard house speed admittedly.
Rollo - with Sister Bliss, these two were titans of mid 90s euphoric dance, rooted in hard house and esp. huge with the gay Trade crowd. anthems like 'Love here I Come', 'Get Off Your High Horse' and 'Let This Be A Prayer' outshine both the likes of Sash! and the likes of Junior Vasquez for the ultra-camp almost evangelical dancefloor rush.
Wamdue Project - aka the elusive Chris Brann - 'King Of My Castle' got remixed into its chart smash incarnation but before that it was a dreamy Balearic house classic of sorts...Roy Malone mix of 'You're The Reason' is also kinda nice.
Triple X 'Feel The Same' - classy filter disco with a heavy pop flavour. Italian i presume? have not heard anything else by them alas...
― stevem (blueski), Saturday, 15 March 2003 12:11 (twenty-one years ago) link
SEARCH the following for house piano action:
Slo-Moshun 'Bells Of NY'Chubby Chunks 'Testament vol. 1'FPI Project 'Back To My Roots'K-Klass 'Rhythm Is A Mystery'Cool 2 'Kinda Groovy' (and if you find this LET ME KNOW!)N-Joi 'Anthem'Jimi Polo 'Better Days' (the track that Congress samples)Shades Of Rhythm 'Sweet Sensation'Starlight 'Numero Uno'
― stevem (blueski), Saturday, 15 March 2003 12:14 (twenty-one years ago) link
― stevem (blueski), Saturday, 15 March 2003 12:19 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Saturday, 15 March 2003 12:20 (twenty-one years ago) link
― stevem (blueski), Saturday, 15 March 2003 12:30 (twenty-one years ago) link
― zemko (bob), Saturday, 15 March 2003 12:30 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Saturday, 15 March 2003 12:41 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tom (Groke), Saturday, 15 March 2003 12:47 (twenty-one years ago) link
they got away with it in 1990 but there's no way the knob-twiddlers couldve kept up that kinda of thing throughout the decade - my 'Spiritually Ibiza' compilation from '95 has Grid style tracks (Mental generation's 'Cafe Del Mar', Audio Deluxe's '60 Seconds' and 'real Life' which sampled Bo Rap long before Raven Maize did) but its really just 'hippy shit' right? if still popular today, it wouldve got even more derision than the likes of Royksopp get on this board now.
― stevem (blueski), Saturday, 15 March 2003 13:24 (twenty-one years ago) link
William Orbit and his Strange Cargo excepted perhaps
― stevem (blueski), Saturday, 15 March 2003 13:31 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ronan (Ronan), Saturday, 15 March 2003 13:32 (twenty-one years ago) link
― stevem (blueski), Saturday, 15 March 2003 13:54 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ronan (Ronan), Saturday, 15 March 2003 13:55 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tom (Groke), Saturday, 15 March 2003 14:13 (twenty-one years ago) link
psychotropic - hypnosis had an sl2 rmx stevem which is a stone cold hardcore classic
― gareth@marys (Mary), Saturday, 15 March 2003 14:19 (twenty-one years ago) link
ok i heard a cheesy trance-pop track the other day played by Chris Moyles and he said 'that's new from Slipmatt' - what a gwan?
― stevem (blueski), Saturday, 15 March 2003 14:40 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tom (Groke), Saturday, 15 March 2003 14:42 (twenty-one years ago) link
i was just thinking about DJ Seduction yesterday - i NEED to hear 'Come On' again - i think this got in the Top 40, as did 'Hardcore Heaven' but they do both fall into the hardcore/rave sound that its credible and popular to romanticise currently
i want to know what people think about Apollo 440 stuff still...'Lolita' was their first thing and apparently made an impression on the rave/techno circuit at the time - heard it gareth?
and indeed what about The Grid? seems like they went away for years then 'Swamp Thing' was a massive hit all over Europe and you had 'Rollercoaster' too. now Dave Ball is back in Soft Cell, what about Richard Norris?
― stevem (blueski), Saturday, 15 March 2003 14:49 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tom (Groke), Saturday, 15 March 2003 14:52 (twenty-one years ago) link
― stevem (blueski), Saturday, 15 March 2003 14:57 (twenty-one years ago) link
― stevem (blueski), Saturday, 15 March 2003 14:58 (twenty-one years ago) link
(Jess yr first reply was godlike btw, AoL fans are even harder-core than The Gathering for realz)
― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Saturday, 15 March 2003 15:12 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Saturday, 15 March 2003 19:04 (twenty-one years ago) link
― donut bitch (donut), Saturday, 15 March 2003 19:04 (twenty-one years ago) link
Highlights being:
We Don't Exist - The Acid BoyzI'll House You - The Jungle BrothersIt Takes Two - Rob Base & DJ E-Z RockGittin' Funky - Kid n' PlayStomp - Master Plan
I really hoped Missy Elliot's fantastic "4 My People" would kick start a HipHouse revival... but sadly no.
"Hot in Herrre" by Nelly is kinda Housey, no?
― Nik (Nik), Saturday, 15 March 2003 20:05 (twenty-one years ago) link
Yes, Italian...
have not heard anything else by them alas...
AFAIK there are no other Triple X originals, but they recently did a great remix of Mundian Te Bach Ke on the Italian 12" release. And their remix of ATC My Heart Beats Like A Drum is amazing in how it transforms the cheesiest of europop into a huge filterfest. And decent remixes of Love Connection The Bomb and Alive Alive.
― Siegbran (eofor), Saturday, 15 March 2003 20:17 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Rockist Scientist, Saturday, 15 March 2003 20:22 (twenty-one years ago) link
You'll have to pitch it up considerably to make it work in a house set though, it's way too slow.
Richard Norris
...is now Electroclash as The Droydz.
― Siegbran (eofor), Saturday, 15 March 2003 20:28 (twenty-one years ago) link
― M Matos (M Matos), Saturday, 15 March 2003 20:40 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Siegbran (eofor), Saturday, 15 March 2003 20:55 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Saturday, 15 March 2003 21:03 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Nik (Nik), Saturday, 15 March 2003 21:04 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Siegbran (eofor), Saturday, 15 March 2003 21:06 (twenty-one years ago) link
Mercifully.
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Saturday, 15 March 2003 21:53 (twenty-one years ago) link
Touch & Go is remembered in the UK thanks to it being the theme song to the show 'As If'
Red 5, Dario G, Captain Hollywood ARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!
Siegbran do you remember Culture Beat's 'Adalante' - thats one i'd like to hear again
now what about U96?
― stevem (blueski), Sunday, 16 March 2003 00:47 (twenty-one years ago) link
― donut bitch (donut), Sunday, 16 March 2003 01:47 (twenty-one years ago) link
Wasn't that an album track? Can't remember it as a single...
U96
"Das Boot" and "Club Bizarre" were close to classic, but the rest is terrible. "Love Religion", "I Wanna Be A Kennedy", "Love Sees No Colour", and his production work for Rollergirl...what the hell was he thinking?
And another list:
Wisdome "Off The Wall"Plaything "Into Space"MC Sar & The Real McCoy "It's On You"King Bee "Back By Dope Demand"Mr Lee "Pump That Body"2 In A Room "Wiggle It" (actually it might be better off forgotten - the 2002 Aquagen remix was abysmal)Mister Mixi & Skinny Scotty "I Can Handle It"Egma "Let The Bass Kick"Fire On High "Float In A Dream Of XTC"Nomad "Devotion"Sonic Surfers "Beat Of Zen"The Farm "All Together Now"Lonnie Gordon "Gonna Catch You"Secchi "I Say Yeah"2 Hyped Brothers & A Dog "Doo Doo Brown" (this is just bizarre...)
― Siegbran (eofor), Sunday, 16 March 2003 13:27 (twenty-one years ago) link
Marusha's 'Deep' and Westbam's 'Celebration generation' are classic, of course you've got the earlier Westbam tracks 'Alarm Clock' and 'The roof Is On Fire' too, but he did some terrible stuff too lets face it
Technohead 'I Wanna Be A Hippy' - still love it, and the GTO stuff is great too.
Nomad "Devotion"
stone. cold. classic. i got listening to this track again late last year and it just sounds better with age, Mikey Freedom's rap has some ironic appeal i guess ("Like Hawk The Slayer I cam and quartered, Maggie came but now she's slaughtered!").
― stevem (blueski), Sunday, 16 March 2003 13:59 (twenty-one years ago) link
OK, but the Technohead tune is a bona fide classic (everybody seems to remember and love it at least), and all the Go Bang! stuff (D-Shake, Turntable Hype, Fierce Ruling Diva, GTO, Quazar, House Of Venus) is pretty canonical, no?
MTVE was the greatest, it's a crying shame it's all been localized now. You got all the German tunes (all the Detroit-Berlin-axis stuff, Fehlmann & Väth, and later all the Mayday rave/techno) as well as the music that was popular in the UK (808 State, The Orb, Orbital, LFO), with Italian, Spanish and French chart hits thrown in as well - all the tunes you never heard on the radio. The first real manifestation of that grand vision of a future unified Europe for me...history quickly crushed that dream.
― Siegbran (eofor), Sunday, 16 March 2003 14:35 (twenty-one years ago) link
(the deep heat comps were great for this stuff)
― michael wells (michael w.), Sunday, 16 March 2003 14:59 (twenty-one years ago) link
I Wanna Give You Devotion!
That song rules!
― Nik (Nik), Sunday, 16 March 2003 18:14 (twenty-one years ago) link
despite all this, MTV Europe was instrumentally useful for exposing dance music throughout Europe with the Partyzone, MTV Dance and so on. which just leaves the question, are Scooter better now than they were 8/9 years ago or not?
― stevem (blueski), Sunday, 16 March 2003 19:19 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ronan (Ronan), Sunday, 16 March 2003 19:38 (twenty-one years ago) link
― stevem (blueski), Sunday, 16 March 2003 21:34 (twenty-one years ago) link
are Scooter better now than they were 8/9 years ago or not?
The great thing about Scooter is that they're exactly the same as 9 years ago. I still remember a 1993 review of the first single Hyper Hyper which went along the lines of "it's absolutely pants. One of those novelty acts we can be sure of that nobody will ever hear of again".
Incidentally, I saw the video for the new Scooter single Weekend a few days ago and it's beyond bizarre. A troupe of Buddhist monk slaves and bare breasted girls, discomforting "faces under skin" CGI FX, all in a fetishist Roman setting. And of course another classic line for HP Baxter: "We Are Not The Monkees! But We've Got The Key!"...
― Siegbran (eofor), Sunday, 16 March 2003 21:46 (twenty-one years ago) link
what was the first video you ever saw on MTVE? mine was actually u96's 'Das Boot' or maybe Adamski ft Nina Hagen's 'Get Your Body' - this was when on holiday in Mallorca in '92. we finally got satellite tv in '93 and i think the first vid i saw then was CultureBeat's 'Mr Vain' or Sven Vath's 'La Esperanza' - as you can see MTVE's influence on me is so huge that remembering shit like that comes very easy.
― stevem (blueski), Sunday, 16 March 2003 21:51 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Siegbran (eofor), Monday, 17 March 2003 10:38 (twenty-one years ago) link
― dog latin (dog latin), Monday, 17 March 2003 18:18 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 17 March 2003 18:30 (twenty-one years ago) link
― matt riedl (veal), Monday, 17 March 2003 20:12 (twenty-one years ago) link
I feel like the trance revival has been ongoing and in different forms for the past few years - all that "deconstructed" Lorenzo Senni stuff, for example. Whereas hard house, as a seperate thing, seems to be making a rehabilitation in a way I've never really picked up on before. Even someone like Ben UFO is in Instagram videos playing Tony De Vit singles, which I couldn't have forseen a few years ago.
I wish I had been old enough to go to Trade, both the culture and the music sound amazing. I love this documentary from Channel 4 from the late 90s about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZqmjV_IydY
― boxedjoy, Friday, 18 March 2022 12:04 (two years ago) link
I went regularly to Trade from 1994 to 2000. Just the best club ever. The vibe was once described as “frenzied and mellow”, which sums it up perfectly.
― mike t-diva, Friday, 18 March 2022 12:13 (two years ago) link
I’m looking forward to no longer having to talk about the hard house 12”s I put out in the late 90’s /early 00’s as some kind of guilty past I have to atone for. My first underage club visits were to jungle / D&B but my real clubbing honeymoon was to hard house and trance at the Hip’po in Cardiff and tbh I had a whale of a time bouncing around to joyous nonsense like this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5xXGbSd_o0
― Agnes, Agatha, Germaine and Jack (Willl), Friday, 18 March 2022 12:22 (two years ago) link
Used to love Hippos. Was a regular there in the early to mid-90s (and also the techno night they had downstairs on a Friday)
― groovypanda, Friday, 18 March 2022 12:51 (two years ago) link
Yep ‘ID’ and ‘Sacred Grooves’ (I think) downstairs, fun times.
― Agnes, Agatha, Germaine and Jack (Willl), Friday, 18 March 2022 12:58 (two years ago) link
Went to Trade a couple of times in the mid 90s. Loved the club, loved the culture, didn't love the music. :)
― stirmonster, Friday, 18 March 2022 13:13 (two years ago) link
As an aside, in the mid 90s a friend of mine ran a successful Thursday night club playing ultra deep house and techno. He used to go on and on about how he had the most sophisticated audience in the city. I was always a bit cynical about his bold claims and figured people mainly just liked going out to that particular club and were not really too invested in what he was playing.
I would play there from time to time and decided to try out an experiment. I mainly stuck to the vibe playing Mood II Swing and Basic Channel type records. But about an hour in, I decided to mix in this Hard House promo I’d been sent that week that was completely OTT, with every BIG record trope imaginable including having a 128 bar mega roll breakdown. He ran over to the booth in total horror to ask what the **** I was doing. I just pointed at the dancefloor which was going off to a level never previously seen at his night. The entire club was on the dancefloor, going bonkers, the bar staff were up on the bar etc. etc.
I don’t think he ever fully forgave me.
― stirmonster, Friday, 18 March 2022 13:27 (two years ago) link
128 bar mega snare roll breakdown.
― stirmonster, Friday, 18 March 2022 13:28 (two years ago) link
Haha, nice story!
Trance has definitey been a thing for a fair few years now among trendy DJs - and TBH there’s not much between the large commercial techno popular now and hard house.
― Chewshabadoo, Friday, 18 March 2022 13:42 (two years ago) link
I want to know what this 128 bar snare roll track is now :D
i wish i could remember. Some long lost white label promo.
― stirmonster, Friday, 18 March 2022 13:51 (two years ago) link
Probably easier to list all 10 hard house / trance tunes without that kind of breakdown
― Agnes, Agatha, Germaine and Jack (Willl), Friday, 18 March 2022 13:52 (two years ago) link
Haha, very good.
― Chewshabadoo, Friday, 18 March 2022 13:59 (two years ago) link
I feel like I missed a trick 10 years or so ago when I had a friend who lived in Brixton and was always raving about the vibe at the hard trance nights at the sadly departed 414 club. At the time the idea of dancing to anything above 130pm filled me with dread.
― Chewshabadoo, Friday, 18 March 2022 14:01 (two years ago) link
love stirmonster's story. i had a similar experience last summer but with an old vocal house tune. never put too much stock into other djs is my motto, trust yourself. no one knows anything, you know as much as anybody. anyway, i know absolutely nothing about hard house other than i'm staying in my slow 130 bpm and below lane for now. xp lol
― the cat needs to start paying for its own cbd (map), Friday, 18 March 2022 14:29 (two years ago) link
itt: stirmonster pretends to have forgotten the joy of playing "Cafe Del Mar"
― boxedjoy, Friday, 18 March 2022 15:08 (two years ago) link
never put too much stock into other djs is my motto, trust yourself. no one knows anything, you know as much as anybody.
need to put this on a card and frame it or something
― donna rouge, Friday, 18 March 2022 18:27 (two years ago) link
coincidentally i recently found a circa 92/3 mix tape of mine and it has the Kid Paul mix of "Cafe Del Mar" and i got the chills listening to it. i can almost imagine playing it again now (pitched down).
i'm staying in my slow 130 bpm and below lane for now.
i love that 130bpm could be considered slow.
― stirmonster, Friday, 18 March 2022 19:02 (two years ago) link
I also love that story.
130 is pretty much my basement tempo, yup. :)
― change display name (Jordan), Friday, 18 March 2022 19:04 (two years ago) link
i am in my 50s, and yet one the things i would still like more than anything is to experience a stirmonster session.
― mark e, Friday, 18 March 2022 19:11 (two years ago) link
it's never too late!
last party i did there was a bunch of 18 year olds having their 1st ever time in a club (they were infinitely more mature than i was at 18) and a guy celebrating his 70th birthday. They all got along great.
― stirmonster, Friday, 18 March 2022 19:18 (two years ago) link
I was working the cloakroom tonight at an event that was about "90s techno" and the last ninety minutes played was all from the Ministry Of Sound/Kisstory axis of "trance classics." But it was all what I would consider the worst end of it - Sandstorm, Seven Days & One Week, Children. I'm unreasonably fond of the stuff that works as pop music - your Sash and Alice Deejay type of stuff - and I say "unreasonably" because I know it's beyond reasoning. I also love the tougher, more muscular stuff that goes towards hard house - Time To Burn, The Launch, Synth & Strings - it feels so much more camp in its dramatics. But ninety minutes of ~moody pads~ and protracted snare build-ups is hard going, the genre's rote moves feel emotionally austere and the grooves aren't interesting enough to be rhythmically captivating, plus all those cheap preset textures.
Basically I want the revival to be more Tony De Vit and less Paul Van Dyke.
― boxedjoy, Saturday, 19 March 2022 05:20 (two years ago) link
Is this finally time for the reassessment of Richard humpty vission’s “big floor funk”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEPc6T4PiFo
― xheugy eddy (D-40), Saturday, 19 March 2022 07:31 (two years ago) link
Worse still is psychology of un voyeur, das person who is aware of his highest moralism but copes with perversions in his worldview that justify morality. Bovine Marquis De Sade, a bizarre all-encompassing childish claim, possesses the qualities necessary to criticize judgment. A liberal Autonomous Dustbin. But wherever my gaze wandered I was in the same extraordinary position: apart from the two responsibilities, sometimes shrill cries of joy and many blasphemies, sometimes loud, there was no sound that one would have liked to hear. Perfect order prevails over everything that was in motion; if there were very rare clashes, a gesture by the presidents or censorship would soon lead to silence; the most appropriate activities cannot take place more calmly. problem is, Americans didn't know how to do the MDMA all together fratboy homophobie, so they never came home hauzemuzik even though they invented it! pop music is not to overthrow Protestantism, obviously wrong. Before puberty, your civilised CV want to make feel supreme, and in that case you would NEVER copulate like innocent, brutal, and angry dog. At some point I find this negative very pathetic, completely immature!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VMSWE-gjMg
― lurka henry, Saturday, 19 March 2022 22:44 (two years ago) link
Damn I was just going to say that
― Agnes, Agatha, Germaine and Jack (Willl), Saturday, 19 March 2022 22:48 (two years ago) link
neo-hard househttps://davequam.bandcamp.com/album/aether-binge
― change display name (Jordan), Friday, 1 April 2022 18:33 (one year ago) link