Back in 2005 or so I found, on some filesharing network, an MP3 rip of The Best Of Non-Stop Super Eurobeat 1998, a double album from the incredibly long-running and prolific Super Eurobeat series. Or, well, one of them.
I didn't end up digging into this for about 15 years, but when I did, I learned that "Super Eurobeat" appears in the name of at least four series' of compilation/remix albums from - who else - Avex Trax. Those are:
- Super Eurobeat
- The Best Of Super Eurobeat
- The Best Of Non-Stop Super Eurobeat
- Super Eurobeat Presents
I'm not sure what distinguishes one from another, and I'm also not sure if they continued making most of these after the 90s. I can't find a Non-Stop Super Eurobeat 2000, but the main Super Eurobeat series is ostensibly up to at least 250 releases.
I don't profess to be a scholar on this subject, but if you're familiar with this genre at all, you'll know it's basically six Italian guys who release a thousand tracks a year, and then some other handful of people remixing those tracks.
The result is that it seems like there are at least five hundred variants of Night Of Fire or Deja Vu, so if you remember those from a DDR or Initial D or just a shitpost video online, you might have a hard time actually finding the same version you heard, because there are just so, so many.
Eurobeat is also highly variable, in my opinion, in terms of... I want to say quality, but I am genuinely being extremely subjective about that. There are a lot of tracks that are just super corny, far above and beyond the usual expectations of eurobeat, and I have a hard time enjoying them. I can't find it now, but I remember grabbing a SEB from like 2006 a while back, and I could best describe it as clowncore - as in, the songs were circus bullshit. I think there was a track that lifted Entry of the Gladiators.
I don't have that problem with The Best Of Non-Stop Super Eurobeat 1998 however - it is one of my favorite albums. I never tire of it. It's that perfect, spot-on eurobeat energy that makes you want to find the nearest twisty road, put the pedal down, and pretend you're in an MR2 instead of your miserable '91 Accord. It's music that outlaws any speed below 60, and frowns even at that.
Yes, I have the obi strip
At least, that's how I feel about the "MST" half. The second side (that is, the second CD in the set) is by "Y&Co", and it just never did it for me. Something about it just doesn't stick the landing; it misses the mark.
It's a wild divide, one side being literally some of the best music I've heard in my life, and the other offering 25 tracks that, in almost as many years, I have struggled to enjoy but just cannot seem to crack.
Even the opener, a remix of the timeless meme-banger Running In The 90s, is one of the most underwhelming mixes of that particular track that I've heard. As a Side One Track One it should be a slam dunk, an absolute crowd-pleaser, an invitation to the dancefloor that puts everyone at ease. It should say, get ready, the next hour is going to kick ass. John Cusack's character in High Fidelity looks crestfallen: "I can't believe they picked that one. That's such a good one. I should have picked that one. My tenth girlfriend was a narcissist,"
Who are "MST" and "Y&Co"? Good question.
Clearly they're producer teams, but the credits are inscrutable to me. Obviously the two men in each of these photos must be them, but I don't know what their actual names are. Perhaps if I read Japanese I would be able to pick them out from the accompanying text.
At any rate, it sure looks like the English text is a list of other albums these groups have worked on, and they appear to be all over the place, different series' on different labels, as one would expect. So, respected artists in their field, one presumes.
And, you know, I can't put my finger on what underwhelms me about Y&Co Side. It's purely je ne sais quoi, nothing I can describe, except maybe in terms of what MST Side gets right.
Track One (Baby Queen Seventeen) opens with that perfect track-one-side-one punch that sets up the album, tells you what's coming and that it's about to kick ass. It starts out with the classic '98 OP, an inverted crash followed by a plain-water high-bpm Fruityloops* dance kit loop under a slowly opening filter that you heard in a million Newgrounds music uploads - but then follows with three distinct drops to set up where the track, and the album, are gonna go. The pacing is perfect, you don't have time to think "oh, is this all?" before you get into the meat of it.
「translator's note: it wasn't called FL Studio yet」
You get the synopsis fast: computer-generated four on the floor kick, aggressive synth, tons of muted ass-rock guitar work with inverted-divebomb squeals for seasoning (pepper pepper pepper), passionate-albeit-gibberish lyrics, and punchy setups for transitions from track to track.
"Nonstop" means all the songs blend together gaplessly, so Baby Queen Seventeen mixes in a measure of Space Boy on its way there, and as Lonely Love gives way to Energy Love the two fight for lyrical dominance before the new track takes the stage.
The lead synths on everything are the usual patches that MST got from the Sysco catalog and nuked in the micro, but if you're listening to Eurobeat they're what you came for. That stabby sharp-attack sawtooth with tons of texture is the heart of the genre, no notes.
The album has three "acts." The first ten tracks or so are classic hi-NRG disco, passionate cries for human connection in the custom of our forefathers (ripples of 2 Brothers on the 4th Floor resonating through time.) The next eight are sappier, mushier romance (think Aqua's Roses Are Red) and the last six are the increasingly frantic soundtrack to the crowd pledging allegience to the DJ, including a track simply named Eurobeat.
The first time I heard a musician simply losing their mind over the course of several tracks, it was a hardcore punk album. I dug it, and when Jeff Rosenstock's WORRY broke down at track 7 and devolved into a series of screaming, one-minute-or-less short subjects, I Understood Where He Was Coming From.
The Best Of Non-Stop Super Eurobeat 1998 - MST Side is no punk album, yet there is almost a similar feeling in the last few tracks. Track 19, Yankee, is the beginning of the end, as the disco theme disintegrates into a fantasy about the Wild West. Yankee, Yankee - Damn Yankee!!
I doubt the BPM actually increases at this point, yet everything feels like it speeds up; the album seems to come out of a daze and remember what it came here to do. The desperation of the front third returns, mixed with a feeling that it's all coming to an end, we might as well go hog wild.
This all culminates in a pair of the weirdest tracks in Eurobeat history (IMO) and reason enough to listen to this entire album, just to earn your wings before hitting 24 and 25.
Track 24 - Funny Boy - is a sudden return to the roots of eurobeat, a poppy, pink-tinged cry of joy from a faceless anime girl that once again recalls notes of Aqua's debut masterpiece, Aquarium. It almost feels out of place, like it belongs in the middle of the disc instead of near the end, but that jarring genre-shock is necessary. You need to be shaken out of your complacency to get ready, for the track that follows the penultimate track.
Track 25 is completely unprecedented on this or any other record I've listened to. As the innocent joy of the last song runs its course, the final repetition of its title lyric echoes - Funny Boy... Funny Boy... - but the bright, cheerful synth riffs of the chorus have been replaced by a hurricane of chugging guitars that turn the sky black as the final track, Sex All Over The Phone, muscles into the room, overwhelming the would-be teeniebopper anthem with its own, far more adult-themed mantra: Sex! Sex! Sex!
The song is a mess. I can't figure out what's going on in it. Every eurobeat song features English lyrics written by people who barely speak English, and trying to make any sense of them is already a fool's errand, but usually you can suss out the basic theme. This one is a cipher. What is it about? What does it mean to have sex all over the phone?
Try this: who cares? Because, as the utterly-gender-indeterminate singer assures us,
Sex All Over The Phone - It's Incredible!!
And whatever the hell it is, you're convinced. This sounds like the weekend you want to be having - after the album ends and the club closes, you're heading right out for some sex all over the phone.
Each chorus is followed by a calliope run of sawtooth stabs comparable to nothing other than the chorus of that classic jam, Running In The 90s. The last one culminates in an ass-rock guitar solo. In between, you get pumped. For an album closer, Sex All Over The Phone pulls no punches. It is a completely balls-out, who-cares anthem to - one assumes - fucking, which is after all the ultimate subtext of so much clubgoing, or so I am led to believe.
Perhaps more than any other single Eurobeat track, this is the one you'd be most embarrassed to be listening to when your mom walks in. That's saying something.
And the real masterwork is that when it's done, when the beat simply dies and the track fades out to a lone echo of Sex... Sex... Sex..., you're not worn out. You're not spent - just the opposite. You're ready to go again.
I have listened to this album countless times. There was a period in my life when it was in the CD player in my car, and I simply never removed or paused it. I turned it down if there was a phone call, or a cop was pulling me over, but I never stopped listening to it. After that final moment of the final track, when all the excitement has died down and the party is over, if your player isn't already set to auto-repeat, your arm will move as if possessed to press that play button once more.
I may not have listened to many other SEB releases - I had a complete collection, but it was so huge it was unmanageable and I only ever tried a few - but I still assure you that this is a shining example of the best the genre has ever offered. Now - why does this praise only apply to the MST side? The only way I can explain it is that Y&Co "doesn't do any of the stuff I said up there."
But perhaps you'll disagree with me, so you should try both of them yourself. For decades, I could not find anywhere to get this album online (and I am very lucky that I never lost it in all that time) but last year I found a CD on Discogs, ordered it, and six months later it arrived from China.
I have now ripped the disc and dumped it on Internet Archive for your enjoyment, and I highly recommend you check it out - there are two zips with FLAC versions of each disc.* Enjoy!
* At the time that I'm posting this, the MST side zip is still uploading, but the MP3s sound fine.