25 Years Since....December 1999

We've reached the end of the 20th century. It's all downhill from here, but lets enjoy what was happening at the end of the golden age for music:

Paul Van Dyk - Another Way

One thing I discovered in 1999 was that Paul Van Dyk isn't Dutch, he's German. An easy mistake to make given his name, but also because I've always rated the Dutch when it comes to dance music. Then again the Germans know how to make a decent trance record so it didn't really come as a surprise to learn Paul Van Dyk is German given this.

Airscape - L'Esperanza

In the 21st century we had some awful commercial trance music coming out of Belgium, most notably Lasgo. It was good in the 20th century though and this is an example of this. Airscape had another hit a couple of months earlier under the name Balearic Bill which was also decent. No vocals, just straight up trance. 

Artful Dodger ft Craig David - Re-Rewind The Crowd Say Bo Selecta

In the summer of 1999 trance was very much the dance genre of the moment. Based on recent history though I knew this would be the case moving forward. When this record came out it became apparent that 2000 would be the year of UK garage, which it was. I wasn't convinced by this record at first, but it grew on me and I ended up buying the one and only Artful Dodger album which is excellent.

DJ Luck And MC Neat - A Little Bit Of Luck

Another record that indicated that the year 2000 would be the year of UK garage. It also gave a clear distinction between house and garage i.e. house is a genre that's never really done MCs whereas this garage record explicitly had an MC as part of the act. OK the MC aspect of garage did sort of kill it in the end, but this was before that aspect got ridiculous. For me this record was all about the beat kicking in.

Len - Steal My Sunshine

We like to place music into genres, particularly at the turn of the century. This was a time when some people would pick their own sub genre of dance music and hate any other sub genre. Then this tune came out which I can't really place in a genre to be honest. All I know is it's a great tune and united happy hardcore fans with drum & bass fans for example even though it couldn't be any more different than either genre. I could listen to this all day at the time, and often did.