Bonkers Part 16

 

When Bonkers went from 3 CDs to 4 it was presumably because things were looking up. After all why would you pay that extra cost to sell at the same price if you don't expect to sell more copies.

Bonkers 16 did the opposite, it reverted back to 3 CDs. We still had Hixxy and Recon on CD 1. Sharkey was mixing CD 2 alongside CLSM and Kutski instead of Marc Smith. CD 3 was basically a merger of the previous albums CD 3 and CD 4 with Scott Brown mixing with Gammer, out went Neophyte and Dougal.

The Hixxy and Recon mix is once again very remix heavy, with 9 of the 15 tracks being remixes. It's also very Raverbaby heavy as expected. Basically it's cheesy vocal stuff that's not my cup of tea.

The significant thing about CD 2 is that CLSM was the composer of "John Peel Is Not Enough" in protest that there wasn't a hardcore show on Radio 1. Kutski then got a show on Radio 1 that played hardcore music.

Traditionally the Sharkey mix has been very much a freeform mix, but as time went on it started to get more similar to hardcore of the non-freeform variety. By the time of this mix it more or less sounds like a hardcore mix.

The inclusion of CLSM and Kutski may be a factor here. Having 3 DJs on a mix seems a bit excessive but there are 22 tracks in the mix. I find myself enjoying "Motion Maker" by Sharkey and AMS in the middle of the mix, but aside from that it doesn't really do anything for me.

I liked the Scott Brown and Neophyte mix on Bonkers 15 for being gabber throughout, but pairing Scott Brown with Gammer means we don't get a completely gabber mix this time. In fact it takes an hour for the gabber to come in. 

I would say this is the poorest Scott Brown mix on a Bonkers album so far. The best bits are the remixes, but even they just sound like inferior versions of the originals. Even the small gabber section at the end isn't great.

As previously stated I had long stopped listening to modern hardcore by the time this album came out in 2006. Therefore this is educating me as to what exactly hardcore in 2006 was like and on this evidence I wasn't missing out on much.

It was the only Bonkers of 2006, but the next Bonkers to come out in 2007 won't be an education because it was Best of Bonkers.