Bonkers Part 17

 

Having a best of compilation to me means one of two things. Either things are going so well that enough people are willing to buy an album they don't really need to complete the collection or there isn't enough decent new material to put on the compilation so you release a best of to keep the momentum going.

The title "Best of Bonkers" was a little misleading though as it would imply every tune that appears on it has appeared on previous Bonkers albums, but they haven't. I guess it's a bit like a bands greatest hits album which includes a couple of unreleased tracks to give the incentive to buy it to those who already own all the albums.

The majority of tracks on the Hixxy and Recon mix hadn't appeared on any previous Bonkers albums. Some of the tracks also date back to before Bonkers existed. All of the tracks on there are from the 20th century.

As a result this is actually a pretty good mix. What's perhaps a little surprising is that the second half of the mix is predominantly Dutch. We've had records from Holland appearing on many of the previous Bonkers album but perhaps not in that sort of quantity.

Joining Sharkey on his mix and making his Bonkers debut is Druid. He was one of the DJs who went down the trancecore/freeform route in the 90s. He also wrote "Bonkers Anthem" with Sharkey, which appears on this mix.

As this is a best of though it's not strictly a freeform set with the opening track being "Toytown". It's a bit of a surprise to see it in the Sharkey mix rather than the Hixxy one, but then it was written by Hixxy and Sharkey.

Without looking back through all the Bonkers track listings, it looks like the bulk of the other tunes previously appeared in Sharkey mixes.

Finally we have a Scott Brown mix which sees him on his own again. As a result we get a mix of mostly Scott Brown records, all of which appeared in previous Scott Brown mixes. 

What became apparent was that this Bonkers album was marking the end of an era because the next Bonkers to come out was called "Bonkers 17: Rebooted". A bit strange given it came out the same year, but I'll take a look into how exactly it was rebooted next week.