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.

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. 

Bonkers Part 15

 

By the time Bonkers 15 came out all the DJs who had mixed a Bonkers album to date were the wrong side of 30. This may have been a factor in altering the line up by making all 4 CDs back to back mixes.

Gammer was by factor the youngest big name DJ at this point having only turned 20 that year and he was paired with Dougal. Recon was aged 24 and the other big name DJ to break through in the 21st century and he was paired up with Hixxy. Marc Smith and Neophyte were older and had been around longer than any of the other DJs but they were paired up with Sharkey and Scott Brown respectively.

Although I was still in my 20s myself I was finding myself more drawn towards the more mature sounding house music. Buying this Bonkers album was never even a consideration.

The notable thing about the Hixxy and Recon mix is seeing 2 labels I'd not come across before, Definitive Dance and Electric Euphoria. Turns out they were labels started by UFO and MC Marley respectively so basically music that would have previously been on Raverbaby.

The main question is would this mix have been any different if it was Hixxy by himself and the answer is probably not. It's a mixture of cheesy vocal stuff, hardcore remixes of commercial dance tunes and awful MC tunes courtesy of Storm and Wizzkid who themselves seemed to be the stars of the raves rather than the DJs by this point.

Onto Sharkey and Marc Smith, once again I would say if Sharkey did this on his own it would probably be the same. One thing I recall from around this time is that freeform was popular enough for there to be a freeform event called Freeformation.

It sounds like this was a result of it sounding more and more like regular hardcore and probably only sounds a bit more serious because it follows a Hixxy set. Around mid-way through the set I hear a tune that grabs my attention and surprise surprise its a tune off Next Generation in "Working Up A Sweat" by Ham.

Things did change somewhat when Neophyte joined Scott Brown. Instead of the usual 2/3 hardcore 1/3 gabber it was 100% gabber. This was a positive move in my opinion as whilst hardcore went downhill in the 21st century, gabber didn't. This was mainly because it never really changed.

Finally there was Dougal with Gammer. This was unlikely to alter too much given that many of Dougal's 21st century tunes were done with Gammer. By this time though Gammer now had his own label called Muffin Records for the material he did by himself.

The mix sounds like a Cludland advert from the word go. Having Gammer on the mix does give it a slightly harder edge, but overall it really sums up what I don't like about more modern hardcore music.

This album meant there had now been more Bonkers albums in the 21st century than there had been in the 20th century. It didn't stop there either, but more on that next week.