30 Years Come Back (Repost Part 3)
Just to get back up to speed this post collects the remaining entries from the blogspot which is being discarded as I will post future entries here.
20080219
Frankie Knuckles & Jamie Principle - Your Love
‘86 is a tough one as I seem to have less tracks from this year than those around it. I was going to put up ‘The Rain’ by Oran Juice Jones but am dissatisfied with how quickly my copy fades out as Oran continues his vengeful tirade against his cheating lover with an increasingly disturbing glee. Shame! Hopefully there’s a longer version out there but in the meantime have the original source material for The Source’s anthemic 1991 hit - wonder how much money Frankie and Jamie made from it themselves (including it’s customary re-mix every five or six years since). You’ll notice the original was slightly higher-pitched than ‘You Got The Love’ and perhaps sounds ‘flatter’ but it’s obviously glorious in it’s own right.
20080220
M/A/R/R/S - Anitina (The First Time I She See Dance)
One of the best AA sides ever. ‘Anitina’s raucous intro is seismic as if aware of what it’s following up. The thud and clatter of the Colourbox drums with AR Kane’s lupine guitars and crooning combine in a divine style, coming off like a black J&MC. How do I shot more cosmic dubgaze?
20080225
Rhythim Is Rhythim - Beyond The Dance (Cult Mix)
My favourite bit of work by Derrick May, alongside R-Tyme’s ‘R Theme’. Monolithic orchestral stabs building and arching over a stream of frosty hi-hats, looping for so long that the beat drop is almost an anticlimax - but still an amazing example of what dance music could be at the time (with May introducing a more lucid and psychedelic warmth to the newly-established Techno genre) and it’s unconventional percussion sounds prescient 20 years later with everyone bored of more traditional snares and claps in techno for so long.
20080303
Jeff Wayne - Eve Of The War (Ben Liebrand Remix) / London Boys - Requiem
Sorry it’s been a week or so since the last post, and with only one year of the 80s left too. Hopefully I can put up a couple of early 90s tracks before this week is out. Before that here’s some FUN in the form of Ben Liebrand’s’Eve Of The War’ remix. The boisterous borrowing of Inner City’s ‘Big Fun’ bass hook and the bleepy middle eights really win it for me.
BONUS FUN: Hadn’t heard it for many years but the London Boys ‘Requiem’ also rools - grandiose and joyous Euro Disco - and derivative as it may be from Cerrone and their own work for Divine and even Hazell Dean, a very enjoyable SAW production at a time when they were running on empty re the likes of Sonia and Jason Donovan.
20080307
Bocca Juniors - Raise (63 Steps To Heaven)
Between Balearic and Big Beat lied Boys Own Recordings and this, their first release in 1990. Named after an Argentinian football club and comprised of House legends Andy Weatherall, Terry Farley and Pete Heller plus Hugo Nicholson, the Bocca Juniors was a short lived project which is a shame even though greater success was achieved by Weatherall and Farley & Heller elsewhere. ‘Raise’ is a marvellous breakbeat piano house stomp shuffle, a mission statement for a hedonistic yoof with a on living without fear and taking opportunities rather than being overtly selfish. Possibly.
20080312
TC 1991 - Berry / Danse City - Melba
Aargh so many tracks from ‘91 I want to put up but rules is rules, bendy as they may be. Yet I’ve managed to wittle it down to these two marvels…
‘Berry’ is a tough tune to categorise but this is from the same Italians (the title is a play on co-producer Luciano Bericchia’s surname) who recorded under the FPI Project (you may be familiar with the fab ‘Rich In Paradise/Back To My Roots’ hit from ‘89). So it has that Eurohouse flavour but no cheesy vocals or rap (shame really, would be a nice option), an excellent warbley bassline verging on the New Beat sound big in the Netherlands and Belgium and a hint of the Progressive House sound emerging throughout the continent that would become big in the UK the following Summer with anthems like Gat Decor’s ‘Passion’. Very of it’s time I suppose but can’t resist those ‘night drive thru the neon city during carnival’ overtones. Must’ve been a monster at Ku that Summer.
BONUS: ‘Melba’ actually takes that theme and ramps it up threefold. Faster, harder and closer to the emerging hardcore sound in the UK. I remember hearing it on one of the first Pete Tong Essential Selection shows I ever listened to, if not the first - by chance I’d switched on Radio 1 unware that Tong had only recently launched his Friday evening show and apparently keen to bring the sounds of Reachin’, Vinyl Solution, Reinforced and other relatively underground labels to the masses alongside his own representation for ‘full frequency range recordings’. The vocal sample is from Todd Terry’s ‘Weekend’. Sorry the vinyl rip is a little bit scratchy and there’s at least one minor jump but if you like your rave rare then this is the real deal.
