Tumgik
#New Beat
possible-streetwear · 6 months
Text
Tumblr media
108 notes · View notes
disease · 2 months
Text
CURSES // MALICE (INTERLUDE) [INCARNADINE, 2022]
14 notes · View notes
randomvarious · 7 months
Text
youtube
Technotronic - "Get Up! (Before the Night Is Over)" 1990 Eurodance / Hip-House / Eurohouse / New Beat
When Belgian project Technotronic first stormed onto the global dance scene in 1989 with their all-time classic debut single, "Pump Up the Jam," it legitimately became the single-biggest song in the entire world. And the sudden star of the group happened to be a beautiful Congolese model named Felly, who naturally shined in the music video, performed the song on TV multiple times, and was exclusively featured in the art for both the single and its corresponding album too.
Tumblr media Tumblr media
But as the world would soon find out, all of this actually turned out to be an enormous ruse. Felly was *not* the singer-rapper of Technotronic that everyone was tricked into believing she was. She actually had nothing to do with the making of the group's music at all and apparently didn't even speak English either! And whenever she performed "Pump Up the Jam," all she did was just lip-sync the words! 😲
So, who was Technotronic's lead vocalist then? Another Congolese-born person: a mere teenager named Ya Kid K, who seemed to possess this uncanny ability to both rap and sing effortlessly in this assertively cool, deep, distinct, velvety-smooth, and magnetically thick New York-sounding accent. She wasn't the most technically skilled rapper out there by any means, but as someone who served as a sort of cross between fitness tape instructor and narrator of catchy contemporary tracks that had been inspired by 1960s dance craze tunes, Ya Kid K was unparalleled. No one else in the world seemed to have a voice that was quite like hers and her mic presence was spectacular.
So then why did they initially try to hide her? Well, Ya Kid K didn't want to sign a contract with ARS Records, the label that was intent on releasing "Pump Up the Jam" and shooting a video for it, and she was already signed to Technotronic leader and producer Jo Bogaert's own record company anyway. In fact, the initial pressing of "Pump Up the Jam," before it ever even broke big, was released on his Sound 89 label, and Ya Kid K was actually credited. But Bogaert wanted to make the record much bigger, and ARS was apparently capable of helping him do that.
Tumblr media
But when Ya Kid K refused to sign that contract, what she didn't seem to be aware of is that ARS was then going to recruit someone else to pump up the jam. And when she found out that her own record was in the shops, with some other woman featured on the cover, she was not happy about it, to say the least.
Now, you also have to keep in mind that Technotronic exploded right at the time when lip-syncing was seen as this totally scandalous act of purely unconscionable inauthenticity. It *ended* Milli Vanilli's career and Italo-dance project Black Box caught a whole lot of flak for it too. So when people finally managed to actually catch on to Technotronic's game, Ya Kid K rightfully and immediately became the face of the group, and then Felly was cast out to the sidelines. And in 1990, Ya Kid K would front Technotronic as the opening act on Madonna's own Blonde Ambition tour.
So, this super fun video here for the group's second single, "Get Up (Before the Night Is Over)," is the one that really marked Ya Kid K's official introduction to the world as the person who truthfully possessed Technotronic's captivatingly golden voice. And she comfortably rocked a wholly different look than Felly's too, by decking herself out in a rotating wardrobe of baggy hip hop clothes, while also covering her short, cornrowed hair with an alternating pair of backwards snapbacks. Felly's presence as the group's original frontwoman had clearly been a boon to Technotronic, and she also still appeared in this particular video by mouthing Ya Kid K's multitracked "before the night is over line" too, but this full package that finally matched Ya Kid K's voice to her own genuinely infectious tomboy swagger was simply unbeatable.
And rather than Technotronic flailing to stay relevant after they'd inevitably found themselves caught up in such an embarrassing fiasco, "Get Up (Before the Night Is Over)" ended up succeeding as an excellent follow-up to their previous era-defining smash, landing itself in the top ten across the entire globe, including #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #2 on the US Dance Play chart as well.
The group's magic would virtually run out by the dawn of the mid-90s, but at least Ya Kid K got a couple years to really bask in a moment that she had been so clearly deserving of all along. It was unfortunate that "Pump Up the Jam" had left her out of the spotlight, but we also don't know if that record would have succeeded as well as it did without Felly either. However, with such a momentous hit then under their belts, Technotronic no longer had to sell that faux image that had helped them become famous in the first place; the people had clearly fallen in love with their tunes, and they were now free to be themselves.
More fun videos here.
23 notes · View notes
Text
youtube
Mystical Maniacs, 1989: "You Cannot Know My Power"
Hope you enjoy a couple of distorted vocal samples because it's about all you're getting
8 notes · View notes
secretmeaningofthings · 6 months
Text
youtube
Fresh off the plate, this visualizer I made for the first set I did for an online show in April 2020, preceding the first online Strict Tempo by a couple weeks. I combined edited visuals from the retro game Altered Beast with some old-school club footage. There is actual footage of me (taken with my phone propped up against the wall, lol, and several Beans cameos) from this set but may take some time for me to assemble. Here are the links to listen to the audio only versions of this set: Mixcloud - https://www.mixcloud.com/VoxSinistra/satur8r-virtual-show-04042020/ Soundcloud - https://soundcloud.com/voxsinistra/satur8r-virtual-show-04042020-ebmtechnosynthpopacidcoldwave Chinaski - Body Horror Body Party - New Beat Situation (Extended Version) Cabaret Voltaire - Sensoria Don’t Argue (Razormaid Combi Mix) H. Stranger - Trashbin Two Mamarrachos - Just Want To Touch You (Cabaret Nocturne Mix) Front 242 - Take One (Rob Dust Remix) Fragrance - Crawling Into the Void 101 - Move Your Body Bawrut - I Hear Voices (Lauer Remix) Privacy - New Wake Trace Boytronic - The Age of Industry  Klangfarbe Antifeind - Gallones (Alek Drive Remix) Kontravoid - So It Seems (Joel Eel Remix) Soft Cell - Sex Dwarf (The Grid Remix) Kompromat - Herztod Velvet May - Shoot Your Eye Out (Autumns Remix) FRACTIONS - Move Your Body (Dance With Me) Marc Ash - Celexxa (Morah Remix) / Velcro Teatre - Regret Hard Corps - Lucky Charm  (Extended Remix) Electric Theatre - Ballet Dancer (Extended Mix)
6 notes · View notes
electroquirkmusic · 9 months
Text
youtube
Maurizio Marsico, 1985: “Funk Sumatra”
Testing the limits of how weird your samples can get before it’s hard to dance to
18 notes · View notes
slowlydiving · 8 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
in case you haven't seen, the account of beat's trainees has started posting!
6 notes · View notes
389 · 1 year
Audio
Tumblr media
22 notes · View notes
dreams-of-mutiny · 1 year
Audio
15 notes · View notes
ritualware · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media
24 notes · View notes
dustrial-inc · 3 months
Text
ɴᴏ ʜᴏᴘᴇ ɴᴏ ꜰᴇᴀʀ ᴛʀᴀᴄᴋ: ʙᴇʟɪᴇꜰ ᴅᴇꜰᴇᴄᴛ, ꜱᴜʀᴀᴄʜᴀɪ
ʟɪᴠᴇ ᴠɪꜱᴜᴀʟꜱ ᴏɴ ᴛᴡɪᴛᴄʜ [ ᴛᴡɪᴛᴄʜ.ᴛᴠ/ᴅᴜꜱᴛʀɪᴀʟ_ɪɴᴄ ]
4 notes · View notes
possible-streetwear · 8 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
75 notes · View notes
disease · 7 months
Text
Tumblr media
NEXT WAVE ACID PUNX: DEUX CURSES | OCT 20, 2023
impatiently awaiting this release. the first installment, released in june of 2021, will retain its freshness for at least a decade's worth of time.
38 notes · View notes
randomvarious · 7 months
Text
youtube
Technotronic - "Pump Up the Jam" 1989 House / Hip-House / Eurodance / New Beat / Eurohouse
Here we go, folks; it's the big one. Belgian dance project Technotronic's legendary debut single, 1989's "Pump Up the Jam," is, whether you like it or not, one of the most important songs in the history of music. And that's because it was the *very first* house track to ever *massively* cross over onto the American pop charts, managing to peak at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, while also dominating many other charts across the globe as well. And in retrospect, as far as the music itself went, it wasn't really anything all that new; but for people who were completely unaware of the underground house tracks that had been pumping out of Chicago since the mid-80s, this song sounded like it could have been shot out of a cannon from Neptune, before incidentally puncturing our very own troposphere. Like, do you know what the #1 song in all of America was when this thing hit its eventual peak in January of 1990? Michael Bolton's "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You." So, imagine getting bludgeoned by that literal one-two punch on your contemporary hit radio station in the dead of winter thirty-three years ago. Nothing like that had *ever* happened before.
Tumblr media
Now, yesterday I got into Technotronic's biggest ever controversy, which was that the lycra-clad girl in the iconically curious and candy-colored music video, who was the same person that appeared exclusively in the group's album art, and who also even went on TV multiple times to perform the group's lone hit herself, was actually a lip-syncing model named Felly who didn't even speak any English. But I'm not going to be relitigating much of that in this post today.
What I am going to be doing, however, is digging into how this track itself came to be made, because there really is quite a long and interesting backstory to it, and it doesn't even begin with anyone who was actually in Technotronic.
See, the tale of how "Pump Up the Jam" first came to fruition actually starts in Chicago in 1988, with this house track here by the legendary Farley "Jackmaster" Funk called "The Acid Life." Trip on this tune and you'll immediately hear where Technotronic derived one of the most recognizable intros in the history of contemporary music from:
youtube
The rippling rhythm of the acid bass pulsations? And the idea to set them between incessantly rattling, pressure-cooked hi-hats too? All of this was actually Farley's invention. Crazy, right?
Now, as far as I can tell, Farley was never officially credited on any of Technotronic's own records as a songwriter for "Pump Up the Jam," but according to a very informative Google-Translated Belgian article I was able to find, he still did end up receiving gains from it 🤘.
But this was really just a starting point for the song. After its first few bars, producer Jo Bogaert would end up taking his tune in a very different direction from that of Farley's. And the first sign was the little taste of string synth that he gave that would later go on to define a piece of Technotronic's own sound.
Now, Jo Bogaert had already become something of a successful musician in Belgium before he'd ever even met the other members of Technotronic. He was a pioneer of this genre that was pretty much only popular in Belgium called new beat, with a trio of hits between '87 and '88 that were released under the moniker of Nux Nemo: "Hiroshima," "Chinatown," and "Asian Fair."
But at a certain point, his productions would end up seeing diminishing returns from the record-buying public, and, as a result, his own label, Clip Records, had found itself struggling too. Bogaert had another idea though, and it was fueled by Farley "Jackmaster" Funk's "Acid Life." He, like so many other European musicians, had a dream of actually breaking big in America. And he would end up using part of an American record to actually do it.
So, with his near-reproduction of the open from "The Acid Life" to kick off his own tune, he ended up cobbling together a similar pair of raw, absolute stompers and pressing them to a 12-inch. Both tracks sampled some dialogue from Eddie Murphy's Delirious set, and under the alias of Pro 24's, Bogaert would title this record...wait for it... "Technotronic."
youtube
youtube
And these two tunes would end up serving as the blueprint for what would later become "Pump Up the Jam."
Now, "Technotronic" didn't do too badly in Belgium, but the CEO at one of the country's biggest labels, ARS Records, thought that it could maybe become a much bigger hit if Bogaert had agreed to make some changes to it. There was a fusion genre that set party rap lyrics to house beats that was gaining popularity in other countries called hip-house, and he thought Bogaert's song could be retooled into a smash if he followed that formula.
But creating a hip-house record would require the talents of a rapper, and Bogaert didn't seem to personally know any. However, he had heard from someone about this sixteen year-old biracial girl originally from Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) named Ya Kid K, who was in a crew called Fresh Beat Productions, and who also had her heart set on recording an album. And as Ya Kid K likes to half-jokingly put it herself, she also happened to be the *only* female black MC in all of Belgium at that time too 😅.
So Bogaert sent out demos to some Belgian rappers and, fortunately, Ya Kid K ended up answering his call. She would take about fifteen minutes to write some inanely hooky lines over his track and then it would take another twenty minutes to record the whole thing itself. The first words out of her mouth ended up being "pump up the jam," so that's what they decided to call their song. They could've called it something like "Make My Day" instead, given how many times that that line was repeated, but M/A/R/R/S had a pretty big hit in "Pump Up the Volume" a couple years prior too, so Bogaert and Ya Kid K were probably trying to chase some of that tune's glory as well.
Bogaert would then release the record on his own Clip label under the name of Technotronik and take it to ARS. And upon hearing it, they were very impressed, but they also said that if they were to pick up the record, the vocalist would also have to be the star, and Ya Kid K didn't want to be in a music video or on an album cover. So, without her knowledge, they went and enlisted Felly to fill those roles instead.
ARS then released the record, and a bunch of labels in other countries picked it up too, and then, miraculously, this song was everywhere. Finally, there was this throbbingly weird and super catchy house tune with a very boisterous vocal that was awkwardly commanding us all to have a good time on the dancefloor; and it came equipped with rap lyrics that you could easily anthemically chant and a beat that you could seriously dance your ass off to as well, as Felly and some other kid would put on display for us in the music video themselves. Clearly, ARS was onto something with their vision for this earworm.
Now, were there better produced house tracks out there than this one in 1989 and 1990? Unquestionably. But because it happened to be unleashed upon a public that was largely unaware of house music altogether, this is the one that just so happened to really break down the barrier that was continually keeping house separate from pop.
And not long after "Pump Up the Jam" conquered, Madonna would drop "Vogue," a song that really managed to successfully mesh pop with house, and even featured a spoken-word rap on it too. It's not to say that Madonna was directly influenced by "Pump Up the Jam" to cut her own house track, but the extremely wide acceptance of Technotronic's debut single over the prior handful of months appeared to lay the groundwork for "Vogue" to then subsequently reign as the undisputed song of the summer for 1990. The door for dance music to finally make its return to the American mainstream for the first time since disco had died had finally been opened, and this unexpected triumph from Belgium seems to be the one that really kickstarted the whole trend. Jo Bogaert's dream of making a big American hit had come true, and Madonna, who loved working out to "Pump Up the Jam" herself, would take his group on her Blonde Ambition world tour as the opening act, with Ya Kid K as Technotronic's rightful frontwoman.
More fun videos here.
17 notes · View notes
Text
youtube
SAY WHAT? SAY WHEUUU?
DJ Jay Dee & Marky Dee, 1990: "Belgian Rap (Engelse Versie)" Clearly growing out of the New Beat scene but replacing the old minimalism and looped samples with this cool new American trend of "rapping on the beat"
2 notes · View notes
soillodge · 4 months
Text
2 notes · View notes