Bonkers Part 12

 

I bought Bonkers 12 when it was the newest Bonkers album so there shouldn't be any going back and forth with dates this time.

At the time of release we had just had the Hixxy & Sharkey show on Radio 1 and Hixxy was about to launch the event Hardcore Till I Die. Hixxy had also done a mix for the John Peel show which John Peel said was the best thing on the show in a long time. All tunes in said mix appeared on this Bonkers album.

Furthermore for the first time we had a fourth CD on a Bonkers album which was mixed by Breeze & Styles who were about to hit the Top 40 for the first time with a commercial dance version of their record "You're Shining". The scene was in a healthy state it seemed.

At the same time we were starting to see some of the things that started to drive people away again. With 2 CDs mixed by Raverbaby artists it should in theory give room for smaller labels to get a look in. However 10 of the 14 tracks on the Hixxy mix were on Raverbaby. Just one of these tunes actually got a Raverbaby release, something that would become a familiar theme.

From my perspective though, the Hixxy mix was probably the worst Bonkers mix I'd heard from him so far. I've owned this for 17 years and listened to it earlier today and I'm still struggling to think of any stand out tracks on it.

The Sharkey mix has one stand out track on there with "Hugger Mugger" by VAGABOND which is on Next Generation records. The final track is yet another hardcore version of "Punk" by Ferry Corsten.

The Scott Brown mix as always is better but I would say not as good as his 9,10 or 11 mixes. Once again it's a Next Generation record that's the stand out tune in "Crazy Love" by Brisk & Ham. What was becoming more apparent is that Next Generation and to a lesser extent Evolution were the labels with the decent tunes. The tunes to my liking on the other labels seemed few and far between.

Unfortunately the Breeze & Styles mix was the worst of the lot. It was mostly their own tunes or their remixes of vocal trance records. Even their remix of "Before Tomorrow" by Eclipse just sounded in every way inferior to the original.

This was definitely the worst Bonkers to this point in my opinion. I did however own other hardcore compilations from around this time such as the Next Generation one which was excellent. Therefore I wasn't giving up on modern hardcore just yet. Later on that year Bonkers 13 came out and I bought it.