Friday 5 October 2012

CJ Bolland - Sugar Is Sweeter (Armands Drum & Bass Mix) (1996)


C. J. Bolland is a British born, Belgian-settled electronic music producer and remixer. As a teenager he was strongly influenced by the Belgian underground scene of new wave, electro and EBM embodied by artists such as Front 242, Neon Judgement and The Klinik. His first productions were aired in the early 1980s on Belgium's Liaisons Dangereuses radio show, and Bolland was one of the first record producers to be signed to the fledgling Belgian techno record label R&S. His first release, Do That Dance in 1989, was followed by several more under different aliases such as Space Opera, The Project, Cee-Jay and Pulse. Bolland's first major success with the track Horsepower on 1991's Ravesignal III EP earned him industry attention and respect with wide airplay amongst European techno DJs, and 1993's 4th Sign album, including the singles Camargue and Nightbreed saw him garner further acclaim and commercial success. Bolland's second album for R&S, Electronic Highway, was released in 1995.



By this point however,  Bolland left R&S (in late 1994) to sign a five album contract with Internal/Polygram Records. During this time he also became notable as the first artist to release an album in the DJ-KiCKS series for German-based independent label Studio !K7. His first studio album for Polygram though was 1996's The Analogue Theatre from which his greatest commercial success came with the single Sugar Is Sweeter hitting no.1 in the US Hot Dance Club Play chart, and reaching no.11 on the UK Singles Chart. Further UK hits followed with The Prophet (no.19) and It Ain't Gonna Be Me (no.35). Bolland is also a prolific remixer with a long list of credits to his name, including Orbital, Depeche Mode, Moby, The Prodigy and Tori Amos. His song The Prophet, sampling Willem Dafoe in Martin Scorsese's 1990 film The Last Temptation of Christ was an underground club hit. In 2000 Bolland released the song Enter The Robot, a collaboration with the Australian producer, Honeysmack, and in 2002 started his own record label, Mole Records.
February 2004 saw the release of The Body Gave You Everything, the début album by Magnus, a dance music/pop collaborative project with Tom Barman, founder and singer for the Belgian rock band, dEUS. In December 2006 Bolland released a solo album called The 5th Sign with the Belgian online record label The Wack Attack Barrack, followed in October 2009 by 500 Euro Cocktail.

Another anthemic remix by Armand Van Helden that only resembles the original by way of the title and the intro vocals; no great loss to these ears as the original is not to my taste at all. But in giving Van Helden an almost free rein in remixing, he helped showcase his own talents and helped his own cause (along with his mix of Sneaker Pimp's Spin Spin Sugar) in becoming a top-flight House music producer.


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