Just listened to an album from 1991 that I had forgotten about, Culture Beat’s Horizon.
I got the cassette as a promo from a record store I worked at. Clearly it was in-store play, because it had one of the stickers we used. And it was something I liked enough to put my initial on, to claim once it was rotated out in favor of something newer.
That’s the main reason I looked it up to stream. Because back then, I had to wait for it. And I kept it after a lot of exposure to it.
It’s super much a statement of the time, with several tracks leaning heavily on other popular tracks and popular samples. One of the tracks was so much like Pump Up the Jam that a decent DJ could probably have faded between the two tracks very easily.
I did not buy the whole album digitally, but a few tracks stood out. Namely No Deeper Meaning, due to the sampling of Change by Tears for Fears, which still makes me squee.
The second half of the album, roughly Side 2, is much less caught in 1991, if still referential (if not reverential). The drums from Running Up that Hill in the outro was a nice touch.
That was a fun time machine ride.