DJ Elevation – Future Vision EP

I picked this mystery white label on here a few weeks ago out of curiosity. Breeze has long been one of my favourite labels - the five full releases are about as good as mid 90s hardcore gets, for my tastes. So even though the style of this release was originally listed as trance, the possibility of another "lost" Breeze EP in the same style was too tantalising to resist.

And it turned out to be worth the gamble - because this is indeed 1996 hardcore in all its uncomplicated glory. The tracks remind me of early Hardcore Mafia releases - full of bouncy distorted 909s and frantic hoovers, similar to the Dutch style (but a little faster), and each track with a familiar rap sample (chipmunked of course)

A - "If my volume was altered, I'd be forced to snap"
B1 - "smoke this motherfucker"
B2 - "check it check it out, on and on, rock until the break of dawn"

Nothing too groundbreaking - but it doesn't have to be. It's just good old fashioned no frills hardcore fun, a giant bomb of cheap speed in musical form :)

I am curious about the BMAX in the catalogue number - if this was the intended first release in a series. It could be connected to DJ Fusion - Kingdom of Trance EP, which was supposed to be the first release on a sublabel "Cool Breeze", but only exists as a super rare white label (like this). Maybe the intention was to have "BMAX" for the harder releases and "Cool Breeze" for hard trance, but then the label folded before it could happen? Although that is just wild conjecture on my part of course!

This does seem to be very rare - at the moment I'm the only owner, and my copy is from the collection of DJ Sass (RIP), who worked for Breeze's distributor Alphamagic. I suspect it might be a test press that didn't even make it to promo, as there's no sticker on the label like other Storm-related promos (which would also explain the rarity).

I'd love to know if there are any more copies of this around - the term "hidden gem" is maybe a bit overused these days but as far as early hardcore goes, that's exactly what this is!

(And I'm afraid I can't rip any clips of it at the moment, sorry!)