take a walk

december 2001, it's a friday night and pete tong is playing mixes from his "heroes of 2001". i put a tape in and go the pub. saturday morning i play it back. felix da housecat played a half hour of what became tagged as "electroclash". tiga & zyntherius (cover of corey hart's "sunglasses at night", toktok vs sofo "missy queen's gonna die" and jamie starr scenario "welcome to thee lite" (a prince pseudonym but bastardised by felix, the track contained some stevie nicks (fleetwood mac) music - later used as "the match of the day" theme which was linus loves' version which he called "the terrace"). this tape was what i had been looking for. house music had become stagnent with defected and others releasing all manner of shit. nothing was exciting me. this new, but at the same time old, music was taking me back to early 80's synth stuff which i loved.

but they weren't making this stuff anymore. so i thought. that one tape led me to discover a whole host of like minded artists who were putting out old new music. soon after i came across italo disco. sounds daft (this stuff had been around more than 20 years) but it's true. this was the music i'd loved without knowing for years. the whole electroclash stuff became a dirty word within months but by that time i'd sorted the wheat from the chaff and realised that italo disco was even better. i'm not even going to try and give you any italo exclusives because kontrapunkt, the red room, i spy diamonds and american athlete cover that better than anyone (see links).

d.j. hell's label (international deejay gigolo's) was putting out this stuff i liked, along with the hacker's (goodlife) label. i lapped that stuff up. two release's (one from each label) were particular faves. vitalic's "poney ep" (gigolo) and the hacker "fadin' away (dima remix)" (goodlife). i didn't realise vitalic was dima (or pascal arbez-nicolas to his mum). they still get played at smackhead towers to this day, especially when i've had a few beers (real ales if any sponsors are reading...as if). there was another track on that tape, by bolz bolz called "take a walk". the version i'd heard was remixed by paul daley (of leftfield) and wasn't up my street (longhaul records - u.k.). the other version was something else, i suppose the name gave it away (neo-romantic dima remix).