Label Realm: progHead memoirs

Letter H is filled with nostalgia, as it features strictly labels from the 90's!

Hard Hands was the home for production duo Leftfield, the purveyors of progressive house music! It was established in 1992 by Neil Barnes & Paul Daley. Their first releases were featured in short-lived label Outer Rhythm. The closure of the company was the starting point for the creation of Hard Hands label, under which two seminal studio albums were released (Leftism - Rhythm And Stealth).

It is certainly one of my favorite record labels of all time. Harthouse was set-up in 1992 by Heinz Roth, Matthias Hoffman & Sven Väth in Offenbach. From 1992 until 1997 it was sub-label of Eye Q Records (the former focused on harder & more minimalistic sound, while the latter hosted more commercial releases). Undoubtedly, it defined the "Sound Of Frankfurt", which was a harder but danceable version of Trance; Hard House or Harthouse. As per Eye Q, the music producers Ralf Hildenbeutel, Matthias Hoffman & Steffen Britzke (along with the artistic force of Papa Sven) were responsible under various aliases for several techno-infused trance tracks, some of which are considered classics nowadays. The popularity of the label led to the creation of foreign departments; Harthouse UK in England, distributed by Rising High (of the late Caspar Pound) and Harthouse America in US, licensed through Moonshine Music. In 1997, the mother company faced hard times, since Sven Väth left the label due to artistic discrepancies and a few months later it went bankrupt. One year later, the company rights were acquired by UCMG, while in 2004 the company was absorbed by Daredo Media. In 2017, the company UCM.ONE took over the label and all rights from Daredo. In my opinion, all the acquisitions should be credited to Joachim Keil, since he was associated with all three companies at some point. The last years the label hosts the trance veterans D3R (Der Dritte Raum).

Meet the Hoojman! Hooj Records was launched in 1991 by Jerry Dickens (aka Red Jerry) and Phil Howells (who left the label after its 4th release). The label is mostly known for several progressive house & trance classics, although it featured throughout the years several music genres (latin balearic sound, tribal house, deep tech house & electro disco tracks). The success of the company in the European dance scene was suspended in 2003 due to bankruptcy. In 2006 the company returned under the same management as Lost Language; the latter was initially a trance offshoot label of Hooj. However, the label company was dissolved in 2010. Four years later, Hooj Choons re-emerged for licensing rights of the back catalog. The iconic logo of the company, the Hoojman, was conceived by Phil's girlfriend at the time, as Red Jerry has mentioned in one of his latest interviews.

Heat Recordings is a London-based label with its first release traced back to 1996. During the second half of the 90's it licensed releases for Moonman (one of Ferry Corsten's early aliases) and Mothers Pride (Andy Cocup of the Groove Armada fame and Anselm Guise). The Big C remix of Mothers Pride - Floribunda remains one of the most epic tracks I have ever heard!

Hi Life Recordings was an imprint of Polydor Records from 1995 until 2000. While the label was mostly known for releasing Fatboy Slim's remix of Wildchild - Renegade Master, which sold numerous physical copies, I learned the label through Nick Bracegirdle's early remixes; his rework on BBG - Just Be Tonight is still memorable.

Tune #105: Rabbit In The Moon - Deeper

Rabbit In The Moon is an American electronic music group that was established in 1992 by David Christophere (Confucius), Steven R. McClure (DJ Monk) and Steve Eachon (Bunny). The group represented the Florida breaks scene of the 90's along with DJs Kimball Collins & Chris Fortier.

RITM rose to prominence with the dancefloor classic O.B.E. (Out-Of-Body Experience), which was released in 1993 by Hallucination, an indie label set-up by Confucius & Monk for releasing their output. The track was later featured in various DJ mix CDs (with Northern Exposure being the most important one) and was also licensed to west coast label Hardkiss (East meets West) with new remixes. After 1994, they broke the American barriers and reached the European electronic music scene, performing remix duties for Orbital, Goldie, Cosmic Baby and Sarah McLachlan. Additionally, they collaborated with German group Humate (then consisted of Gerret Frerichs & Patrick Kjonberg) for the 4-tracker Hemispheres E.P. The success of the EP produced an additional release with remixes for one of the tracks-hemispheres (East).

Today's track is a B-side taken from a purple-tinted vinyl, released by Hallucination in limited edition. Deeper is a hypnotic breakbeat track that includes the representative breaks sound of RITM. Firstly exposed to it via Chicane's comp CD, it is certainly not a track to pass through. A nice trivia of Deeper is that it features a slowed down sample of Kate Bush vocals, taken from her song And Dream Of Sheep.

RABBIT IN THE MOON - DEEPER

In 2002 Monk leaves the group, which continues to exist till this day as duo (Confucius & Bunny). While I am not familiar with their latest sound, it seems that their live performances are very intense and cinematic, a sight worth seeing!

P.S. I'm weak so let me sleep and dream of sheep...

10-Year Blogoversary!

Whoa! Time flies... It has been 10 years since first post!

Let me present some stats for Music Miner, in order to extract meaningful insights.

I was 100% certain that the vast majority of tracks (presented by Music Miner) would originate from the 90's. It is absolutely my favorite era in terms of electronic music. The tracks from the mid-00's follow in second place (although I remember that during my teen years which were aligned with that period I was still listening music from the 90's). The third place belongs to the first period of electronic dance music (80's). My main reason to trace back tunes from that era was to gain fundamental knowledge in music genres that emerged during that decade. Furthermore, the last time period produced the smallest output, but this fact can be justified:

- During the first years of Music Miner I was mostly listening to music from previous periods than contemporary tracks.
- I was disillusioned with the state of trance music, which was my favorite music genre (trancecracker spotted!)

In terms of tracks per music genre, I expected the results a little worse (i.e. lacking diversity). Obviously, Trance and House are the prominent genres (almost a tie), with Techno coming third. However, other genres were also presented, with smaller contribution. I believe that during the last years I was exposed at a higher level in other music realms, leading to blog posts spanning different music styles.

Drilling down to music styles, Trance / Techno / Progressive House are cited largely. I am positively surprised that Electro made it to the Top-5. It is a music style that I need to dig in deeper for more obscurities (since the majority of them were known tracks). Another future goal would be to produce more output for other styles, especially Leftfield, Future Jazz & IDM.

The country breakdown presents the Great Powers of Electronic Music (for my ears at least); UK, USA & Germany. Although tracks from different countries were presented, one may notice that Dutch music was never my preference (even Belgians had greater contribution!). One thing that I am skeptical though is if I should have focused more on Greek music or not (the last years have been very productive and interesting).


Finally, you may find below a nice visual with the labels tagged in this blog via a non-stat manner!

What would be the future plans and status of Music Miner?  One could only wonder...