CJ Bolland's Spring Yard scared the pants off me

I sometimes....

No, wait.

I often fantasise about writing a list of my favourite tracks of all time. In order. One, two, three, and so on. It's a fantasy because I'd find it impossible. However, a potential contender would be a bitey little trance track from 1992 called Spring Yard.

You can listen to Spring Yard below if you want.

The artist is CJ Bolland whose crossover 1996 hit Sugar Is Sweeter was a perfect pick-me-up for Prodigy fans. Before that, in his pre-Polygram days, Bolland was in no mood to hit the charts. Indeed, the R&S album The 4th Sign was a glorious collection of stampeding trance music - the kind of stuff us young beat-heads were listening to while everyone else thought techno was 2 Unlimited.

Bolland was melodic too: stand-out track Camargue was pure, sweet Belgian techno. Indeed I could pick any track off The 4th Sign, but Spring Yard was the one that scared me. That's right. Scared. It was a ferocious number that threatened to destroy my speakers. It taught me - warned me - that techno had no bounds. And although the strings sound a little clunky now, the track was also beautiful.

This alongside Sven Väth's similarly throbbing Accident In Paradise? Definitely in my top ten. Or twenty. Maybe. I don't know. See - totally impossible.



And for reference:





Further Fats: Chosen Words: V is for Väth