I loved “Praise You”, and yes the video was an essential part of that. Possibly the first ever flash mob?

I find Spike Jonze to be one of the most overrated directors. I never like his concepts or his visuals.

 

 

loved Praise You! and the follow up, even more

Armand Van Helden feat. Duane Harden - You Don't Know Me

 

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c32/tonyttt31/youdont.jpg

 

Date 31th January 1999

2 Weeks

Official Chart Run 1-2-7-13-20-27-32-35-39-45-74-72 (12 weeks)

*Positions in red are the weeks when the track would be number 1 if just dance music was chart eligible.

 

Next up is Armand van Helden with another sample-heavy track. Like Fatboy Slim, Van Helden takes a clipping of a 70s soul song and builds a mammoth house track around it and in doing so he score his first solo chart topper. Also like Fatboy Slim before him, he'd been at number 1 as a remix artist. As most of us know, back in 1996 he took a vocal clip of Tori Amos' Professional Widow and made one of THE club tracks of the mid-90s hitting the top spot on re-release in January 1997 (see page 51 of this thread).

 

Professional Widow established him as a named remixer and demand soared for Van Helden product. He subsequently remixed tracks for Daft Punk, Sash!, 2 Unlimited, Aaliyah, Goldie, Faithless, Janet Jackson, Gwen Stefani, Justin Timberlake, among others.

 

The trick of taking a well chosen sample and creating a new hit with it was nothing new but Stardust had given this art a new twist in '98 and the clubs loved it. There was clearly an appetite for this sort of thing. What Van Helden used was a rising string section from Dance With You, a Carrie Lucas song from her third album Carrie Lucas in Danceland. Dance With You was her only hit in the UK reaching number 40 in 1979.

 

Van Helden paired this with some drums from Plastic Dreams by Jaydee. For vocals Armand asked Duane Harden to contribute. Harden had only been in the music business for 2 years at this stage but was more than able to add a club hit standard vocal to it. They pair never actually entered the studio together. Van Helden completed the whole track before handing it over to Harden for his part.

 

The track tops our chart for 2 weeks as the best selling dance single. Armand Van Helden continues to remix very high profile acts like Madonna and Sam Smith along with remixing lesser known acts like Petite Meller and Twin Shadow.

 

He had a further number 1 single with Dizzee Rascal in 2009 with Bonkers and was last in the charts with that same song when it re-entered in 2012. He remains a world class DJ.

 

Armand van Helden :heart: that song is a serious chooooon :music: he'd also be one of the first people I'd name as a house music legend

I loved all this French house in 98 and 99 and was so pleased when this hit #1 after Stardust were cruelly denied. Probably my fave from the movement (which sadly charted very low) was Alan Braxe & Fred Falke’s “Intro”.

DJ Sakin & Friends - Protect Your Mind (For the Love of a Princess)

 

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c32/tonyttt31/djsakin.jpg

 

Date 14th February 1999

3 Weeks

Official Chart Run 4-7-13-19-25-32-40-50-57-64-71 (11 weeks)

*Positions in red are the weeks when the track would be number 1 if just dance music was chart eligible.

 

Here is the first of disappointingly few trance number 1s from 1999, despite this being the year that the charts became flooded with freshly remixed and re-released underground classics from the previous few years.

 

DJ Sakin, or to give him his real name Sakin Bozkurt is a Turkish-German trance music producer.

He began spinning vinyl in 1990 at age 23 in Wiesbaden club Wartburg and later MusicHall in Frankfurt where Mark Spoon of Jam and Spoon and Michael Münzing of Snap started their careers. From early on his sets consisted of trance music and his long term plan was to create his own.

 

Protect Your Mind is based on an excerpt from James Horner's theme from the movie Braveheart. The trance adaptation dates back to 1997 when it was released on 12" on the Planet Love Records label in Germany, backed by the totally unrelated track Protect Yourself.

 

A year later it was released in Italy on Red Alert Records after popularity of the track spread among Italian DJs. This was backed with the Suspicious mix. Suspicious was an alias of Torsten Stenzel, who is one of two people who make up the "& Friends" part of DJ Sakin & Friends (the other being Janet Taylor)

Stenzel is one of the most prolific and well connected of all the late 90s trance DJs and will be known to many through his other successful act York which he formed with his brother Jorg.

 

In 1999 Protect Your Mind (For the Love of a Princess) got a UK release after it had been given a sublime vocal element courtesy of Janet Taylor. The track was a hit all over Europe and total sales have topped 700,000.

 

The trio followed this up with the even more euphoric Nomandsland later in 1999 and an album Walk on Fire also followed. The two DJs in the group continue to release and remix music to this day. However, that is the last we'll see of them here.

This one's always been a huge guilty pleasure of mine - much poppier and more basic than the big euphoric trance hits to come, but hugely catchy and a great listen. Also #1 on the Scottish Singles Chart I think!

 

The video and radio edits are very different for some reason - radio mix loses the big intro and puts the vocal track in a different place at the end.

This one's always been a huge guilty pleasure of mine - much poppier and more basic than the big euphoric trance hits to come, but hugely catchy and a great listen. Also #1 on the Scottish Singles Chart I think!

 

It's not the first time in this thread that someone has eluded to "big euphoric trance hits to come". I wonder do we all mean the same thing by that?

 

My impulse is to think of Out of the Blue, Gouryella and Carte Blanche as the big euphoric trance hits.

Edited June 1, 20169 yr by Colm

Massive fan of 'Protect Your Mind', not that version though, it's all about this version:

 

 

:wub: trance doesn't get much more euphoric than this!

There's lots of remixes. I found one I liked last night but I can't remember it now :D

Edited June 1, 20169 yr by Colm

I despise late 90s euphoric trance but not surprised to hear it topped the Scottish charts. My nation's dance music tastes have always been a bit suspect!

I despise late 90s euphoric trance but not surprised to hear it topped the Scottish charts. My nation's dance music tastes have always been a bit suspect!

 

 

Out of the Blue :wub:

Trying to work out if the euphoric trance was better or worse than the cheesy Scottish rave scene of a few years earlier.

Out of the Blue has only improved with age. I truly believe that it was the pinnacle of trance and that it stands up as one of the greatest dance songs there has ever been. A wonderful example of the form. It really shows off the tricks of the trade. When the gated synth comes crashing in it's like an ecstatic explosion in my head. Glad it was never ruined with vocals.

Out of the Blue is absolutely up there with my fave songs of all time, even more so since Ferry remastered it in 2010 - keeping exactly the same instrumentation and layout but just sonically beefing it up a tad. Was absolutely mindblown when I first heard it around 2004-05.

Vengaboys - We like to Party!(The Vengabus)

 

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c32/tonyttt31/vengaboys-we-like-to-party.jpg

 

Date 7th March 1999

3 Weeks

Official Chart Run 3-4-5-8-10-12-13-20-23-31-42-51-59-64 (14 weeks)

*Positions in red are the weeks when the track would be number 1 if just dance music was chart eligible.

 

As much as trance was the sound of 1999 in the clubs, this lot sound tracked the year for a certain type of music fan.

 

Rather like Steps, but few would like the comparison, they moved from their debut UK hit to more of a conventional song structure to follow it up. Also like Steps they would excel (if one can excel) at irritating/infectious (delete as appropriate) unselfconsciousness dance-pop. Though never ones for existentialist rhetoric or hymns of soul searching solitude, We Like To Party is possibly their most party orientated song, constantly ram raiding your subconscious with the words "We Like to Party".

 

There's also talk of a vehicle to transport this inter-city disco around various global locations. Like Up and Down this was released in 1998 in the Dutch market before being unleashed on the rest of the continent in 1999 - where it went Top 10 in 9 countries, gaining them their first number 1 anywhere in Belgium.

 

Somewhat hidden in the track are samples from Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick's La Di Da Di and Billy Ocean's When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going - a cover of which was the official number 1 as this stood at number 3. Because this was 1999 (and not a normal year) even songs with a fairly run of the mill chart run, as this does, could amass sales over over 470,000 as it frequently entailed selling 100,000 copies in a week just to make it to number 3.

 

This was record label Positiva's joint biggest hit in the UK at this point, matching the peak of B.B.E's Seven Days and One Week. All that would change later in the year.

 

We'll hear more from the Boys soon.

 

"Protect Your Mind" is good, but "We Like To Party" is an eternal classic, especially that it's now summertime (weather wise :lol: ).

We like To Party is at least more memorable than Uncle John from Jamaica.

Who doesn't love a bit of the Vengaboys? *_* I mean it got a bit much when they started recycling the same bassline for their future songs, but We Like to Party is still a jam (as were a few of their other songs still to come in here!)