Top 20 songs of all time
1. cafe del mar - Energy 52 (three in 1 edit) http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=BUt-Gn80hD0
Simply nothing beats this song at 3am when you are just waiting for everything to kick in. Don’t believe me? Skip to 1.40 in the song close your eyes and tell me you don’t want to put your hands in the air and scream.
2. Not Over Yet - Grace (original mix) http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=wVfzGhQtN3c&feature=related
If you ever needed the perfect track to ‘go and have it out with yourself on the dancefloor’ this is it. The best example of pure, unbridled and unashamed hands in the air, reach for the lasers, safe as fuck joy you will ever hear.
3. Delirium - Silence ft. Sarah McLachlan (Tiesto Mix) http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=kEvE_04x-xI&feature=related
First featured on the Northern Exposure mix from Sasha and Digweed as a menacing breakbeat the Tiesto mix gave this track a massive stadium feel that pretty much every producer wanted to copy for the next 18 months.
4. PNAU - Embrace. http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=pnau&emb=1#q=pnau&emb=1&start=10
The fact that this track was beaten in the JJJ hottest 100 by the presents is proof that your average JJJ listener is no longer the cool, slightly edgy music head but is in fact a 14 year old girl. With the ability to make you want to sing along, well before you have worked out what the lyrics are this track captures the very essence of the Australian summer vibe. Turn this up, shut your eyes and imagine yourself at Good Vibes going bananas to this. “FEEL MY EMBRACE NOW!!”
5. Itch-E and Scratch-E - Sweetness and Light http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=5lYtYK67Ex8
If winning the inaugural Aria award for ‘best dance release’ wasn’t enough. Paul Mac instantly became part of Australian dance music legend by gushingly thanking ‘all the ecstasy dealers in Australia’ during his acceptance speech. Is that enough to get you top 5 on my list? You bet.
6. U2 - Lemon (The Perfecto Remix) http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=s1Y0HyLWSWw
Released as a B side on the see through yellow picture disk this track opened my sets for nearly a year. Building and building you don’t think this track can get any better. Then the female vocals kick in and your brain explodes. (but in a nice way)
7. DJ Scott Project O (Overdrive) http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=yolX0uwu0Ug&feature=related
If you played this track to your plants while you were growing them they would all turn in to massive cactus with teeth and grills. If this track had a facebook page it’s chief interests would be raping looting and pillaging, it would have a tattoo of a dragon as it’s profile picture and if you ever ‘poked’ it O would come to your house and punch you in the face.
8. Space Frog - X-Ray(Follow Me) http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=pg0BLZszvHM
One of the stand out examples of Hard Trance. If this track doesn’t give you goose bumps then you probably want to see a doctor. “Come closer, to the speaker, follow me!”
9. Donna Summer - I feel Love http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8TBmeK9AbgReleased in 1977 this track has been remixed, reused and refilled more time than a drink bottle at a late 80’s warehouse party before the cops came to shut it down. But like a condom, some things just don’t work as well the 2nd time round. Legend has it that when Bowie first heard this track he thought it would have a lasting effect on music for the next 15 years. He was half right, he should have said 30.
10. Stakker - Humanoid (Plump DJs retouch) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMTwVSkDSnM
The Plumps didn’t so much re-mix this track as go to it house and nick its late 80’s acid voiceover then proceeded to completely kick the shit out of it’s bass line like it had said something bad about their mothers. With it’s ‘dance or fuck’ off vibe this track was a shinning example of why the Plumps were are the forefront of the breakbeat movement that ate dance music in the early part of this century.
11. Utah Saints - Something good (original Mix and the Van She 08 mix are a dead tie here)
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=oMLCrzy9TEs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUxhNWDlGts
This track needs no introduction. 90’s madness, kate bush, quality. If god was a DJ this would be his encore track.
12. What time is love (uncensored) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzNKXTAi658
In a career that lasted only a short while the klf;
Did a slash metal version of 3am eternal and fired automatic weapons loaded with blanks at a music awards ceremony.
Deleted their entire back catalogue.
Set a million pounds on fire
Wrote a book called ‘how to make a hit record without trying’
and dumped a dead sheep at an awards after party with a note ‘I died for your sins’ pinned to it.
In short The KLF were the sex pistols of Dance Music. Except that their lead singer didn’t die from an OD, wasn’t investigated for murder and, oh yea, they had some weird fascination with cows. Apart from that totally same / same.
13. Kadoc - The night train http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QlTG2z9m3E&feature=related
Simply the best example of what my mother calls Choo choo music exer made. With an inexplicable video that I’m pretty sure has sexual overtones with trains and tunnels this track is guaranteed to blow up a dancefloor like a pipe bomb at a US High School.
14. Bedrock - Heaven Scent http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIXbEugdMAo
When John Digweed tells you that he has a favourite track, you listen.
15. Tekara - Breathe in Me (Takara’s M & M Dub) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxjgjmDNGB0
Imagine a ninja, flying, with star wars playing in the background, while you are on acid. Now times that by a million and you still wont be close the level of awesomeness achieved by the breakdown and build-up in this track. With a rolling drum snare and phaser effect wound out to the max you ache for the drum beat to kick back in, you itch for it, you are like a junkie needing his next hit. When it finally does it feels like Tekara has somehow managed to burrow into your ear canal and kick your brain in the nuts. Remember if you die on the dance floor you die happy.
16. Lazy - David Bryne & Xpress 2 (original mix) http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=G3lJwyQ_2Qg
This track inspires me to write nothing for this track.
17. Ultra Sonic - Tik Tok http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va3xc0zMmJM
No list can ever be complete without some U.S. Without these guys my youth would have souded a lot less interesting.
18. Armand Van Helden - You don’t know me http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNSpLqmY6K0
19. Front 242 - Headhunter 2000 (Space Frog mix) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgSxjFw0PO0
This is everything that you would expect from the bastard child of Belgian Electronic industrialists Front 242 and German Hard Trace act Space Frog. This is a track that is so hard you are sometimes afraid to take it out of it sleeve, lest the record grab a gun and demand money and a ride to the airport. With its intense lyrics and unsettling screams this track is meant to be played at proper dance parties. Ones where there are no chillout rooms, no bar and no aircon. Just a DJ and fuckoff giant speakers. Nuff said, see you on the dancefloor.
20. US3 - Cantaloop http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9HnoRgRIwg
And now for something completely different.
Posted on February 9th, 2009 by B
Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
