‘Music For The Dancers’ N°523 – Vintage 90s Music Videos

1 . DJ H – Think About (w/ Stefy)

“Think About” by D.J. H. featuring Stefy is a kaleidoscope of early ’90s sampling culture, stitching together fragments of Aretha Franklin’s “Rock-A-Lott” and “Think” into a framework that feels both derivative and unabashedly celebratory.

Released across 1990 and 1991 in various vinyl iterations, the track stands as a curious artifact of its era—rooted in the euphoric haze of club culture while leaning on the undeniable allure of Franklin’s iconic source material. The interplay of Stefy’s contributions with D.J. H.’s patchwork approach creates a soundscape that feels simultaneously nostalgic and mechanical, almost as if caught in an auditory time loop.

The remix culture surrounding the track adds layers of interest, as evidenced by edits like the “Dj HERBIE TECH edit 2020” available on Bandcamp. While these reimaginations attempt to recontextualize the song for contemporary listeners, they sometimes expose the track’s reliance on borrowed brilliance rather than original innovation.

Absent from notable charts or award circuits, “Think About” hovers in musical purgatory—not quite impactful enough to break through, but peculiar enough to persist in underground circles. Its vinyl releases, detailed on platforms like Discogs, provide a trail of its fragmented legacy, yet the enigmatic identity of D.J. H. leaves listeners with more questions than answers.

Ultimately, the track is less a cohesive statement and more a snapshot of an era obsessed with the immediacy of sampling. It’s functional and fleeting, depending heavily on the charm of Aretha’s originals rather than making a definitive statement of its own. Decades later, it remains more referential than revolutionary.

Featured on the 1991 album “Wicked And Wild”.

Lyrics >> More by the same : Instagram

2 . DJ Supreme – Tha Horns Of Jericho [Tha Joka]

“Tha Horns Of Jericho” by DJ Supreme, released in 2003, underscores the artist’s knack for crafting high-energy compositions that straddle the line between club rhythm and auditory chaos.

Peaking at number 29 on the UK Singles Chart and keeping a foothold in the rankings for two weeks, the track doesn’t quite scream chart dominator but instead situates itself as a niche hit—a sonic underdog stubbornly roaring against the mainstream grain.

The song’s relentless beats showcase what DJ Supreme—also monikered as Soops—does best: fusing contemporary electronic pulses with raw, genre-splicing boldness.

Its modern feel doesn’t destabilize the track as much as it packages chaos into something you can almost dance to, provided you have the endurance of someone willing to keep up with its punishing rhythm. If other DJ Supreme tracks like “Up To Tha Wildstyle” or “Tha Wildstyle” serve as evidence, this is not a man aiming for simplicity.

The official video for the track, surprisingly launched five years later on YouTube in 2008, adds an extra layer of interest, though perhaps coming a little late to the party in capitalizing on the song’s initial buzz.

It’s a reminder of Supreme’s creative capabilities but doesn’t fully transcend its own boundaries. While his collaborations with Spencer & Hill or Darius Syrossian illustrate broader scope, “Tha Horns Of Jericho” feels resolutely insular—a confident, frenetic solo statement that knuckles down instead of reaching out. A fascinating, if somewhat demanding, listen.

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3 . DJ Sakin & Friends – Protect Your Mind [For The Love Of A Princess]

“Protect Your Mind (For the Love of a Princess)” wears its cinematic origins on its sleeve, channeling James Horner’s “For the Love of a Princess” from *Braveheart* into a trance framework that feels both reverent and derivative.

DJ Sakin & Friends, led by Sakin Bozkurt with input from producer Torsten Stenzel and vocalist Janet Taylor, trades orchestral grandeur for pulsing synths and cinematic strings, transforming Horner’s composition into a club-ready anthem. The track’s rhythmic drive and airy textures aim for transcendence, but its reliance on preassembled emotional cues—courtesy of *Braveheart*’s already evocative score—leaves it teetering between homage and opportunistic repurposing.

Released in 1998 as the project’s debut single and later anchored in their sole album, *Walk On Fire* (1999), the song managed impressive commercial momentum. Chart-topping in Scotland and securing top-five spots in the UK, Germany, Ireland, and Denmark, the track clearly resonated, perhaps more for its familiarity than originality. Certified Gold in Germany with 250,000 units and Silver in the UK for 200,000 sales, its shiny accolades underscore a broader late-’90s appetite for trance’s emotive escapism.

Where the vocal version is an interesting, if heavy-handed, meeting of cinematic pathos and electronic euphoria, the remixes strain to introduce something new. The Ayla remake and Suspicious remix add texture but never escape the long shadow of the original movie theme. A 2022 update by Talla 2XLC injects uplifting energy, if only to confirm that nostalgia remains the song’s most potent currency.

The track earned a 1999 Echo Award nomination for “Best Dance Single (National),” though this nod likely acknowledges its sales dominance over artistic innovation. As a trance reimagining, it capitalizes on its source material’s emotional heft but wavers in delivering an identity of its own—an irony for a song titled “Protect Your Mind.”

Featured on the 1999 album “Walk On Fire”.

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4 . Transa – Enervate

“Enervate,” a 1997 release by the British duo Transa, is the kind of track that thrives on its clarity of purpose.

As a 12-inch vinyl single, it carves out a space within the electronic music terrain, leaning into the simplicity of its uplifting core without veering into overindulgence.

Its unassuming design seems calibrated not for introspection but for revival—tailored to jolt a slumping dancefloor back to life.

It’s less about dazzling you with intricate layers and more about serving as a brisk reminder of what keeps the wheels turning in a late-night club setting.

Part of Transa’s broader discography, discoverable on platforms like Discogs, “Enervate” reflects the duo’s steadfast presence within the era’s electronica circuit.

This is not a track that appears preoccupied with charting new territory but instead hones its energy into delivering precisely what one might expect from a tightly cut vinyl of its time: a functional, floor-responsive anthem.

If criticism can be leveled, it might stem from the very thing that defines it—a reliance on simplicity that, while effective, risks blurring it into the broader landscape of ’90s electronic music.

Still, for those tuning into Transa’s profile, it holds its own, a beat-driven slice of 1997 etched into grooves designed for the night. Minimal yet purposeful, it’s neither groundbreaking nor redundant—just enough to remind you why the format persists through decades of musical shifts.

Featured on the 1998 album “Tranceport”.

More by the same : Wikipedia

5 . Hysterix – Everything

Released in 1994 under the Deconstruction/RCA label, “Everything” by Hysterix feels like a time capsule for the vibrant UK house music scene of the mid-’90s, a period when groove met ambition on the dancefloor.

As far as chart performance goes, flattening out at #65 on the UK Official Singles Chart might seem underwhelming, but a stronger showing at #14 on the UK Official Dance Singles Chart reminds us where this track truly belongs—clubs, not living rooms.

The release comes packed with remixes, including T-Empo’s “Key Lime Pie Mix” and “Orlando Orchestra Mix,” as well as the Bottom Dollar Mix, each attempting to reframe “Everything” for slightly different sonic palettes. Whether the lime pie sweetness or orchestral sweep fully elevates the original track is debatable, but the variety doesn’t hurt.

“Everything” delivers fully within its house designation, finding its roots in a genre trading in repetition as much as subtle shift. However, calling it magnetic may be a stretch. The era was crowded with innovations in the electronic world, and Hysterix offers competence over invention.

Its two-week presence on the UK charts—beginning February 18, 1995—cements its transient, niche appeal. While it carried the right tools to move bodies on a weekend, it likely left few weekday memories. “Everything” succeeds where it aims but rarely looks upward. B

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6 . 808 State – In Yer Face

“In Yer Face” stands as a snapshot of 808 State’s capacity to balance sonic aggression with dancefloor sensibility.

Released in 1994, the track climbed to number 9 on the UK Singles Chart, an achievement that cemented its visibility within the electronic music sphere during a period teetering between rave euphoria and techno’s deeper tides.

The song delivers an unrelenting surge of high-energy production, defined by its textured maze of synthesizers and relentless drum machine beats.

It’s as though the track wrestles between control and chaos, a hallmark of 808 State’s dense compositional style, which often revels in the collision of the pre-programmed and the spontaneous.

This duality is arguably bolstered by the group’s live ethos, where Graham Massey, Andrew Barker, and Darren Partington frequently navigated the intersection of improvisation and precision—a feat not always successfully replicated by their contemporaries.

“In Yer Face” bolsters the band’s lineage, sitting comfortably alongside tracks like “Pacific 202” and “Cubik.”

However, where those other tracks shimmer with a fluidity that invites, “In Yer Face” opts instead for tension, a rawness that can oscillate between thrilling and abrasive, depending on the moment.

In crafting this, 808 State sidesteps electronic music stereotypes—the sterile, detached tinkerers—by wrenching emotion and immediacy out of technology.

The live-focused approach amplifies this: the song feels genetically engineered to thrive in megawatt venues, from Club Megadog to sweat-drenched warehouses where unpredictability was a virtue.

While some listeners might find its aggression teetering into oversaturation, the track’s unapologetic density is also its calling card, proving that sometimes, the sheer weight of sound can be its own form of poetry.

Featured on the 1991 album “ex:el”.

Lyrics >> Review >> More by the same : Official Site

7 . Loop Da Loop – Hazel

“Hazel” by Loop Da Loop, produced by Nick Dresti and released in 1998, occupies a peculiar space in the pantheon of late ’90s UK electronic music.

It resides within the Big Beat and Breakbeat genres, conjuring frenetic yet calculated rhythms fitting neatly into the era’s fixation with bold, sample-heavy construction.

Achieving a peak position of number 20 on the UK charts, “Hazel” lives comfortably within the confines of a one-hit wonder, an observation not only by categorization but by absence—Loop Da Loop’s creative output seems, at least publicly, to have ceased with this single moment.

The track, devoid of collaborations to bolster its presence, feels insistently solitary—a lone artifact orbiting the crowded, hyperactive scene that birthed acts like The Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim.

But while “Hazel” is clearly of its time, it lacks the kind of nervy invention or conceptual audacity that truly defined that period’s dance-floor greats.

Instead, it is all propulsion and surface, carried aloft briefly by the commercial momentum of a genre in vogue before disappearing into the archival depths of ‘90s ephemera.

As with many relics of this kind, historical curiosity might draw listeners back, though it’s unlikely the track itself will compel consistent revisitation.

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8 . Quench – Dreams

“Dreams” by Quench exemplifies early ’90s trance in its most unvarnished, club-centric form, spotlighting Christopher J. Dolan’s flair for crafting mesmerizing soundscapes.

Co-produced with Sean Quinn, the track thrives on its clever blend of atmospheric pads and filtered sawtooth synthesizer riffs—a choice that might seem commonplace in hindsight but was still finding its footing in 1993.

The production feels sturdy but hardly groundbreaking, leaning into a hypnotic repetition that was ideal for strobe-lit dancefloors. It’s doubtful the track’s longevity rests on its melodic complexity; instead, it sustains itself through sheer rhythmic immersion.

The song’s rapid ascent was bolstered by getting airtime on Pete Tong’s BBC Radio 1 show that December, an endorsement that no doubt contributed to its charting at number 9 in France and scraping a modest spot at number 75 in the UK.

Its later re-release in 1994, complete with an extended mix and a dreamy “Space Mix,” suggests that Quench understood the commercial potential of reinvention, even if the extra versions didn’t veer drastically from the original template.

Featured on the 1994 album “Sequenchial,” the track encapsulates an era when trance was transitioning from niche to mainstream, particularly in regions like Germany and the UK.

Where “Dreams” truly shines is its unintentional foreshadowing of trends that would dominate the genre by the late ’90s. In that sense, it’s less an innovative leap and more a time capsule, reminding listeners how trance once balanced between atmosphere and propulsion without succumbing entirely to formula.

By October 2000, having sold over a million copies worldwide, the track’s success was undeniable, even if its depth feels more functional than emotional. A 1995 ARIA nomination for Best Dance Release hints at its impact, though perhaps it pales in comparison to more layered contemporaries of its time.

If anything, “Dreams” illustrates how Dolan, through Quench, contributed to trance’s early vocabulary without necessarily rewriting it.

Featured on the 1994 album “Sequenchial”.

Lyrics >> Review >> More by the same : Wikipedia

9 . Meat Beat Manifesto – Mindstream

“Mindstream” by Meat Beat Manifesto, a pivotal track from their 1992 album “Satyricon,” teeters between the relentless pulse of early ’90s techno and the labyrinthine textures of industrial breakbeat.

This was a period when the band, spearheaded by Jack Dangers, leaned further into the burgeoning electronic mainstream, drawing upon the rhythmic complexities influenced by contemporaries like Orbital and The Orb, while not fully abandoning their underground ethos.

The track itself brims with heavy beats and cascading samples—trademarks of the band’s style, but here stretched and layered in ways that feel equally indebted to the mechanical precision of techno and the sprawling improvisation of avant-garde sonic experimentation.

Where “Mindstream” succeeds is in its versatility—a streak of unpredictability courses through its shifting structures, always dynamic but never haphazard. But this same frenetic approach could leave less patient listeners alienated, as it teeters on the edge of indulgence at times. What it loses in immediate accessibility, however, it gains in raw texture, a spectacle of sound more suited to the band’s immersive live performances than passive listening.

Meat Beat Manifesto’s ability to amalgamate disparate electronic genres is undeniable here. Yet, while the track stands as a solid example of their musical evolution during the early ’90s, it doesn’t quite escape the gravity of the scene it’s orbiting. “Mindstream” captures a moment, but whether it transcends it or merely settles into its grooves is a matter left to the era’s hindsight.

Featured on the 1992 album “Satyricon”.

Lyrics >> More by the same : Official Site

10 . Charles & Eddie – N.Y.C. [Can You Believe This City?]

“N.Y.C. (Can You Believe This City?)” from Charles & Eddie’s 1993 debut *Duophonic* attempts to bottle the chaos and charm of New York City, but its impact feels more like a snapshot than a full panorama.

Written by Eddie Chacon and J. Freed, the track nods to the duo’s own origin story—the serendipitous meeting on the C train where their partnership was born. Yet, its lyrics fall short of the vividness such a backstory demands. For a city as overwhelming and dynamic as NYC, the song remains strangely subdued, resting too heavily on its mid-tempo groove and clean production without venturing into the grit or soul of its subject.

Charting at number 33 on the UK Singles Chart, it’s clear the track had some appeal, likely carried by the goodwill generated by their smash hit “Would I Lie To You?” But where the latter thrived on irresistible hooks and a cheeky confidence, “N.Y.C.” feels content to tread water, skimming the surface rather than diving into the depths of urban life.

Vocally, Charles Pettigrew’s jazz-trained precision, honed at Berklee College of Music, melds with Eddie Chacon’s West Coast songwriting experience to produce harmonies that are smooth but predictable. Their soulful tone echoes ’60s duos like Sam and Dave, but without the emotional tension that made their forebears unforgettable.

Though its place in their catalog proves the duo were more than fleeting chart-toppers, the track lacks the arresting qualities that make listeners return. “N.Y.C. (Can You Believe This City?)” feels like the city seen through a tourist’s lens—polished, pleasant, but lacking the messy, beating heart of the real thing.

Featured on the 1992 album “Duophonic”.

Lyrics >> More by the same : Wikipedia

11 . Paul Simon – Proof

“Proof,” released in February 1991 as the second single from Paul Simon’s *The Rhythm of the Saints*, finds the artist navigating the intricate grooves and textures of his world music influences, but with a result that feels more competent than compelling.

The song itself is an exercise in precision, both lyrically and sonically, yet it rarely breaks past its calculated exterior. Simon, known for his deft songwriting, seems here more interested in rhythmic complexity than emotional resonance, crafting a piece that feels as much like an intellectual study as a pop single. Its modest chart performance—peaking at number 89 on the UK Singles Chart and an unimpressive number 134 in Australia—reflects its inability to fully connect beyond its technical prowess.

One of the more intriguing aspects is the song’s accompanying music video, which features comedians Chevy Chase and Steve Martin. While their presence injects a playful irony into the proceedings, much of the humor leans on a parody of M.C. Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This.” It’s clever enough, but the cultural commentary feels more dated than timeless, a fleeting moment of 1991 rather than a bold statement.

Simon’s production remains polished throughout, though it perhaps leans too heavily on finesse at the expense of heart. As the songwriter and producer, Simon fully embodies his established reputation for eclecticism, but his world music blend here feels more like a continuation of past experiments than a bold step forward. While *The Rhythm of the Saints* undoubtedly showcases his artistic ambition, “Proof” serves as a reminder that ambition does not always equal transcendence.

By contrast, the B-side, “The Cool, Cool River,” carries a deeper emotional undercurrent, offering the kind of layered storytelling Simon fans often crave. Some versions reportedly included “The Coast” as the B-side, another track with more expansive lyrical themes. In both cases, these pairings might simply overshadow “Proof’s” somewhat restrained energy, highlighting what it lacks rather than enhancing its strengths.

Paul Simon’s storied career, from Simon & Garfunkel’s folk-era anthems to solo triumphs like *Graceland*, has been marked by innovation and reinvention. Yet, while “Proof” exhibits Simon’s enduring knack for craft, it functions more as a polished artifact than a song destined to linger in consciousness. For an artist whose catalog often feels timeless, “Proof” is curiously locked in its moment.

Featured on the 1990 album “The Rhythm of the Saints“.

Lyrics >> Review >> More by the same : Official Site

12 . Scooter – Back In The U.K.

“Back in the U.K.” captures Scooter’s proclivity for mining peculiar sources, sampling the theme from *Miss Marple* with an irreverent glee that positions it somewhere between homage and hijack.

Released in November 1995 as the lead single from *Our Happy Hardcore*, the track exemplifies the German band’s knack for commanding attention through outlandish, high-octane productions. H.P. Baxxter’s signature bark cuts through the frenetic instrumentation like a drill sergeant at a rave, leaving no room for subtlety.

The single made a notable splash in the UK, debuting at number 18 on the Singles Chart in February 1996—a career high for Scooter until “The Logical Song” surpassed it in 2002. For three weeks, it held its own in a chart climate increasingly receptive to left-field dance acts, a testament (or indictment) of mid-’90s pop sensibilities.

The re-recorded “Back in Ireland” underscores the band’s playful adaptability, though repurposing a song for regional appeal feels more craftily transactional than creatively inspired. Meanwhile, the inclusion of a reworked “Crank it Up” on *Da Ali G Show* as Brüno’s intro track threaded the song through an entirely different cultural moment, repackaging its bombast for satirical gloss.

Energetic live performances remained Scooter’s calling card, and this track likely benefited from the group’s flair for spectacle. Still, the heavy reliance on pre-existing hooks raises questions about their creative instincts, towing the line between resourceful and derivative.

Featured on the 1996 album “Our Happy Hardcore”.

Lyrics >> Review >> More by the same : Official Site