If you spent the 90s hanging around specialist record shops and raves, you were probably never more than 20 yards away from Kinetic. Whether it was in its bedroom DJ original form or via one of its many remixes courtesy of the likes of Orbital, the track took on a life of its own over the course of the decade. You think The Cranberries had to play the long game? They were overnight sensations compared to this track’s progression towards the Top 40.
Written by Michael Hazell and Paul Hartnoll of the aforementioned Orbital, Kinetic first surfaced as a track by The Pied Piper on 1991’s Hooked on Hope EP. Then having put out a record of Orbital mixes of the tune, Hazell and Hartnoll paired one of the Orbital mixes with the posted mix by Frank de Wulf, at which point, presumably because the record featured the vision of at least four people and maybe because they were watching Channel 4 one evening, they decided to put these mixes out under the moniker, Golden Girls. De Wulf’s mix, which Peel described as a dance track you can whistle along to feels like a hit in waiting. It strips out the intricately dissonant synths of the original cut and throws in catchy refrains which keep bringing the track back to base as well an earworm female vocal line and several opportunities where the beat drops so the floor can go wild. I should have been seeing this performed on Top of the Pops by a group of dancers for hire and tutting to my 16 year old self about the paucity of “real music” on the programme. It’s easily the equal of tracks from the same period like U Got 2 Know by Capella. But the charts weren’t receptive to De Wulf’s mix and the record became a clubland classic.
It clearly exerted some kind of hold on the collective memory of scenesters through the decade because in 1998, Distinct’ive Records released another set of remixes of Kinetic, including an Orbital mix. The radio edit broke into the lower reaches of the UK Top 40 singles chart. A hit record, 7 years in the making. It should have gone higher but the censor baiting video may have worked against it. And still Kinetic worked its spell over listeners with further versions put out in 1999 and 2001.
Video courtesy of House and Techno (late 80s to mid 90s)
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