You can find all of these tracks on YouTube, often with direct links to the label websites should you care to purchase high resolution copies. Do the right thing. Support independent record labels and their artists!
Rather than blur 1991 into a hotchpotch of styles in one list, we’ve decided to split it into a series of styles that were rocking UK dancefloors during this pinnacle year in our illustrious history.
By ’91 British producers were borrowing sections of piano from Italo house records (and imitating it with their own versions) to create a truly unique style known as piano hardcore, or E Tunes to some. This totally homegrown style consisted of a combination of slamming breaks and uplifting (rush inducing) piano riffs that inadvertently became the precursor to the UK Happy Hardcore movement of late ’93/’94 and ’95.
In this small but beautiful list we will listen to the cream of the genre from the biggest and best labels, but remember, while we’ve split them up for the sake of clarity, these tunes were generally spun amongst a myriad other styles on one set. We’ve just segregated them in order to make the later sections make a bit more sense.
