Happy Hardcore is not a genre with a large number of obscure tracks. Unlike Jungle, or even its forefather, plain old Hardcore, there simply aren’t troves of white labels from forgotten artists. The vast majority of tracks appeared on a handful of labels by a small number of talented engineers and producers working under a range of pseudonyms.
That being said, there are plenty of underplayed releases, overlooked B-sides and other oddities. It seemed fitting to compile some of these together into a mix and give them a new burst of life. You can play the mix below, or check it out on YouTube here.
1/ Kristine W – Feel What You Want (Bootleg Remix)
First, we kick off with a straight-up bootleg of this classic 1994 house track. There were plenty of official remixes, but this time Jack Smooth and Al Spencer give it the jungle/hardcore treatment. It’s a pretty straightforward affair, but ‘sounds superior’ (see what I did there?) because it’s produced by Smooth.
Jack Smooth is obsessed with the Shadows J break from Hip This House. This break features in many of his productions from I Feel The Heat through to This Is A Trip and A New Direction. As far as I can tell, this break is a cut-up of the Lyn Collins Think beat, with a truckload of reverb added. And the Shadows J track appears to be the origin.
This remix would sit comfortable in a jungle or hardcore set. And back in 1994 there was still plenty of crossover between the genres.
2/ Sunshine Productions – Symphony In September
Admittedly, not that obscure because it’s the flip side to Above The Clouds. However, most DJs chose to play the belting Vibes & Wishdokta remix of Clouds instead, which was released separately. Anyway, I declare this mix of Symphony the best of the bunch, with its contrast between dreamy pianos and noisy hoovers. It’s relatively underplayed.
The vocal is sampled from an Italio-House release from the same year, Mars Plastic - Find The Way. The eagle-eared amongst you will clock that this is the same track Skanna sampled for Until The Night Is Morning. Not exactly a banger, but an enjoyable roller from the period, before hardcore went full-on merry-go-round. Kniteforce attempted to reissue this particular version, but did a Kniteforce and put the wrong mix on the record. Ha!
3/ Sub-State - Worldwide
I love Jack Berry’s productions - and here is a track under his Sub-State alias. They are all a little unpredictable, sometimes feel completely broken, but all contain great moments amongst the mayhem. Now this track is a bit of a mess in my opinion, and also a complete pain to mix. The intro beats gallop all over the place and first drop is, quite frankly, fucking strange. The second drop is equally weird and switches into a sort of down-tempo moment of contemplation contrasting with the initial euphoria. Therefore, everyone ignored Worldwide as it doesn’t make any sense and played the remix of Take Me Up on the flip, which was a far more accessible affair. But perhaps not as exciting as this medley of sampled madness!
4/ Beatmen - Imagination
Time to creatively calm things down after Worldwide. This straightforward release uses the 'Prayers - Imagination' acapella from 1992, also used by DJ Seduction in his identically named, but more banging, 'Imagination' release on Impact. This is a textbook Jack Smooth production - clean, uplifting and effective.
5/ Trance & Roughcut – Vol. 1
Most of Trance’s releases were on the Homegrown label. But for whatever reason, this gets an independent release on the sparse IR label. Unlike most happy hardcore, this is a hypnotic and dreamy affair. A short vocal snippet from Silvia Coleman’s Into The Night, warm chords, strings and a piano loop. And that’s it. A somewhat unusual and progressive track structure for the era. Not really a dancefloor banger, but enjoyable in a mix nevertheless.
6/ DJ Ganja Brain - Sounds Of Summer
This is a super lo-fi happy hardcore track, made using god knows what! It sounds like it was mastered to cassette tape at some point, as you can hear analog drop-outs and other artefacts you’d expect to hear from tape. Ironically, modern producers simulate this sort of effect with a plug-in today! A frustrating track to DJ, as you run the volume levels into the red, but it ultimately doesn’t sound loud due to the mastering, or lack of it.
The vocals and piano lifted from T-Empo - Saturday Night, Sunday Morning "Saturday night keeps shining on my Sunday morning face", which is a cover of a Thelma Houston disco track. It all sits together quite well, the structure and overlapping vocal loops are cool.
7/ DJ H & The Kids In Space - Party Pollution
Solid stabs and an enjoyable flow from DJ H on the short-lived Prolific Heights label. I believe this is a different DJ H to the producer who made The Bass Project EP in 1993. Bonus rave points for misspelling ‘pollution’ on the label. Unfortunately, copies of this release appear to have been pressed off-centre - so have that speeding up/slowing down sea-sickness effect when played! Therefore, I feel obliged to mix out a little quickly from this.
8/ Terrible Twins - Cained & Able
As always with Stompin Choonz, amazing production values and bags of originality. This has the hallmarks of Justin Time / Matt Carlton oozing from its fabric, despite being credited to the Terrible Twins. Parts of the track sound close to DJ Slam’s Influence, another Justin Time production. The journey through mad stab and synth sounds, before the wild drop into an increasingly twisted vocal really does it for me.
9/ Storm Syndicut - Soul Searchin’
Storm Syndicut had almost as many members as the So Solid Crew - including Crispin Miller and Shaun O'Hara, who were behind the successful Aurora EPs from 1992 and 1993. Members were responsible for a series of energetic releases across both Burning Bush, and its parent label, Stormtrooper. This EP wasn’t played anywhere near as much as ‘Hold Me In Your Arms’, but has all the ingredients for success: booming sine-wave bass, mad drum edits, frenetic stab sequences that switch every few bars and a kind of unusual dubby breakdown. Also, Burning Bush had some of the most amusing weed induced label art going. Pretty much every early track on this label conjures up the mental image of a load of teenagers getting mashed and making music.
10/ DJ H - Love Is
Love Is… straight up chipmunks apparently! This is probably the sort of sound that people associate with happy hardcore, but in fairness most big releases either used original vocalists or time-stretching, so the vocals remained at a sensible pitch. Anyway, this track is great because it sounds rough-as, contains a trumpet sound, and you can hear all the joins between the loops. I should really know where the vocals are lifted from, but I don’t.
11/ DJ Obscene - Vol 1
Get Mash Up! Yes, more happy hardcore should have clearly sounded like this. Fast scratches, solid noises, interesting synth work, a great combination of euphoria and suspense. Speculation in the discogs comments on who made this, but it was clearly someone who knew what they were doing.
12/ High Flyers - Shine Your Light
A complete barrage of silly stompy noise. This is another Jack Berry tour de force. The almost religious looping hallelujah ‘We’ll all live together’ really tickles me somewhere inappropriate. The main ‘I want to thank you’ vocal drop is kind of awful, but somewhat authentic. Then into loads of diva wailing. Great! I would have played this for longer, but I’m somewhat mindful no one likes this tune as much as me. My kids came in and started dancing just as I was mixing out of this, I had to shoo them out of the room to avoid needles jumping!
13/ Jimmy J & Cru-L-T - Body
Body was one of the final releases from this prolific 90s duo, before they went their separate ways. It was relegated to the B-Side of this release, but is frankly a lot more enjoyable than the flip. Banging stab intro. Huge vocal sample lifted from Suzi Carr - All Over Me. Kick drums in the face. Pure 170bpm euphoria.
14/ High Flyers - Can You Feel It?
…why, yes I can. Good piano work on this. I’ll stop playing Jack Berry tracks now. Love the unintentionally scary art on this.
15/ DJ Demo - Hustlers In Hardcore
I only discovered this track when Demo played it a rave I attended a few years ago. Surprisingly, this came out in 1999 on white label! DJ Demo completely ignores the norms of the era and releases a pure breakbeat jungle rusher, making use of Praise’s ‘Only You’, with Redman lyrics thrown in for good measure. For comparison purposes, most hardcore resembled sped-up failed eurovision entries by this point. (Although I’d stopped listening to happy hardcore by this point, so I’m not exactly an oracle of the era).
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