In their track »Teachers«, Daft Punk called Joey Beltram a rolemodel; the British music journalist Simon Reynolds even named his historical outline of electronic dance music after Beltram’s most famous track: »Energy Flash«. Why? Because, of all the songs and tracks that have milled their ways into our collective pop-cultural memory so deeply that they’re almost considered common property, »Energy Flash« must have been the biggest surprise hit. When Beltham produced the track, at times, when he was a hardly known solo-producer, he was no more than twenty years old. And still, he was already an old hand at the decks. A year away from his first legal beer, young Joey could already look back on a career of seven years, working as a DJ for electro, hip hop, and house. To this day, Beltram denies that he thought of the drug of the same name when engrossedly whispering »ecstasy« into the mic. And still, »Energy Flash« has made history as the unmatched homage to the chemical fun-pill – there were actual sub-genres founded, always referring to the track. In 1990, it was released on Derrick May‘s Transmat-Imprint, while R&S Records spread the techno-anthem all over the European market. And that is exactly where the maybe most important 5 minutes and 43 seconds of the early nineties are being rereleased – remastered and pressed on a one-sided 12“. The fact that this rerelease is more than necessary can easily be proven by taking a look at the local techno dance floors, where »Energy Flash« is still being played, almost 25 years after its original release. Besides »Strings Of Life« by Rhythim Is Rhythim and Inner Citys »Good Life«, Joey Beltram’s supposedly innocent ode to ecstasy remains to be one of the most important – and incidentally most banging – artefacts of a sub-culture which so often is accused of lacking historical awareness.
Energy Flash
