Tuesday 18 March 2008

Jem 77 "Never Felt This Way" -from the "Forbidden Planet EP (21 Records, 1992)

Posted by Picasa

I think I've got time for another piece of Old-School Hardcore GENIUS, don't you? Here's another one of those tunes which is now virtually impossible to find, More's the pity. This was a staple of DJ Sy's sets back in the early 1990's, and it's easy to see why: for a scratch DJ, the breaks are hectic, but wide open, leaving lots of room for furious scratching over the top of the track. The tinkling pianos and rushing sample lines make this one another tune that presages the rise of happy hardcore, without fully surrendering itself to the cheesier stereotypes of that side of things. Jem 77 released a number of tunes on 21 Records, before, as was so often the case back then, moving off into more "Progressive" directions, recording as The Good Strawberries. This, for me, is my favourite of all of their output; though if you can find the EP from which it comes, there are some other great tracks on it (including one which samples "Eruption" by Van Halen!) what's less well know about Jem 77 is that it was (partly) the work of Joel Bogen, who i'm pretty sure was the Guitarist in Toyah's band.

Jem 77 - "Never Felt This Way" (Remix) (mp3)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Iain - do you have the happy hardcore version of Luther&Janet's The Best Things In Life Are Free? The lyric goes something like "the best things in life are free/ all i want is my ecstacy". I heard it at a now-defunct second-hand record shop in Cannes about 10 years ago!
SONNY

Naperville Fan Repairs said...

Niice blog thanks for posting