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- Date Released: January 1, 1996
- Genre: Electronic
- Label: R&S Records / state51
Two electronic music classics from one of the early '90's finest producers.
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We Say...
It was once rumored that Joey Beltram was going to produce the next Metallica album. Back in 1992 that didn't seem so fanciful, though. Techno was considered the Next Big Thing, US record industry mavens like Rick Rubin were signing up rave acts and Queens boy Beltram was one of the hottest producers around. Techno landmarks, his all-time classics "Energy Flash" (1990) and "Mentasm" (1991) announced and then intensified a new hard, dark direction in rave music, a literally divisive development that ultimately caused the global subculture to fragment into radically opposed genres.
The curious thing about "Energy Flash" is that while many house connoisseurs were horrified by what it spawned (an ultra-fast, industrial-tinged style from Northern Europe they dissed as "heavy metal techno"), the original track itself is almost universally loved. House purists dug it as a late-period "acid" track, while in America the tune was licensed by Derrick May's Transmat label, revered by all Detroit disciples. Yet equally the young ravers who would soon invent jungle, gabba and trance could smell the future in "Energy Flash."
What does it sound like, though? The pummeling, naggingly hypnotic bass-pulse is the obvious hook, and the sinister synth-ripples and creepy male voice whispering "acid, ecstasy" add atmosphere. But what really makes "Energy Flash" is the fantastic drum track, those massively reverbed snare crashes in the back of the mix that create the feeling of a controlled stampede. "Flash" is a paragon of the tricky techno art of building and building the intensity without ever losing the quality of maniacal fixatedness.
"Mentasm," a collaboration with Mundo Muzique as Second Phase, took this hard-riffing style even further. To use a metal analogy, if "Flash" was "Whole Lotta Love," then "Mentasm" was "Iron Man." Its signature sound — a snaking, gaseous synth-noise evocative of dangerously delirious bliss — is the selling point, but as with "Flash," clever drum programming (metallic snare crashes coming in at a strange angle to the groove) plays a crucial role in keeping you rapt by this exercise in monstrous monotony. "Mentasm" served as a huge polarizer, its apocalyptic bombast being taken by many techno aficionados as the harbinger of a troubling new Brutalism in dance music, barbaric and even faintly fascistic (an impression strengthened by imitators with titles like "Dominator").
The rest of Classics comprises Beltram's other quality productions of the early '90s, tunes like "My Sound" and "Sub-Bass Experience" in a similarly cold and punitive mold to "Flash" and "Mentasm" but lacking their titanic aura. After inventing "hardcore," Beltram veered away in a minimalist direction, becoming a respected but minor auteur — a trajectory that mirrored techno's own journey from being the sound that mobilized ravers across the world to being just one of a panoply of post-rave genres. -
They Say...
Suitably titled, R&S' Beltram best-of collects his finest work for the Belgian label, compiling hardcore mainstays such as "Energy Flash," "My Sound," and "Mentasm." Although it leaves off some crucial cuts by dint of label affiliation, much of Beltram's most significant early work first appeared on R&S, making this CD/LP a perfect introduction to his influential sound.
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| 01. |  |
Energy Flash |
5:53 |
|
| 02. | |
Jazz 303 |
4:51 |
|
| 03. | |
Subsonic Trance |
3:30 |
|
| 04. | |
Psycho Bass |
5:00 |
|
| 05. | |
My Sound |
4:04 |
|
| 06. | |
The Melody |
4:44 |
|
| 07. | |
Sub-Bass Experience |
4:57 |
|
| 08. | |
The Reflex |
4:54 |
|
| 09. | |
Mind To Mind |
5:36 |
|
| 10. | |
Mentasm |
4:26 |
|
| 11. | |
Joey's Riot |
4:29 |
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| 12. | |
The Trance |
4:40 |
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| 13. | |
Groove Attack |
3:15 |
|
13 Total Tracks, 60:19 Total Length
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Credits
- Joey Beltram - Composer // Joey Beltram - Producer // Joey Beltram - Writer // Joey Beltram - Main Performer
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