Jam & Spoon – Tales From A Danceographic Ocean

The "hold me, love me" refrain has bugged me for decades. I love it, but is it a sample? Not according to Who Sampled Who but it sounded familiar in 1992 and is still familiar now!

Given a proper listen 'Keep on Movin' is really an acid track, not so much trance IMHO. I don't really hear any trance elements in there, but pleanty of jackin' acid with the rubbery acid line, the backwards beats and everything else....acid, and a good acid tune at that !

All 3 tracks are top notch, 5 stars all the way.

Forget about Stella. If you're interested in Trance crowd pleasers then sure, but for me it was always the much tougher dancefloor devastation of Keep Moving. That track doesn't get the love it deserves :)

'Stella' is a wonderful, wonderful track and will be timeless - no question. I'm not sure which came first in 1992 but Mendel's Discoveries ‎- 'Landscapes' release http://discogs.desbloquearpagina.com/Mendels-Discoveries-Landscapes/release/156136 uses the same effective chord sequence with a bit of a deeper techno twist and is also worth a listen. Nowhere near as good but an interesting curio !

i may suggest that "stella" is a reference from the movie "Eis am Stiel" (the nymphomanic stella)

The piano track in the song Stella was obviously a strong inspiration for Moby in his 1995 song God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters.

a truly stand out iconic track , file next to "unity 3 suite" and "age of love stella mix" . when trance was cool . still so well produced these sounds just work . awesome . rip marc spoon

If you wanna speak about the roots of Trance music, then this track has to be mensioned. For the first time electronic music was smooth, soft to hear, basic and complex at the same time. Altough Fantastic FF uses the wellknown TwinPeaks time, it still stands as an original track. And ofcourse Stella is the masterpeace here.
But... the one who is most forgotten on this record is Keep On Moving. Yes indead, not realy tranzy, rather breakbeat house. But brilliant it is. And because it is unknown, it is still like a fresh floorfiller. I am very attrackted to the sawbass in this track. Wonderfull line to get the people start to dance. Check out!

Luckily, I had the chance to find out about one of the tunes that influenced me on the early nineties - "Stella" (whose name I promised myself I would give my daughter one day, but unfortunately its author Rolf Ellmer A.K.A. Jam El Mar stole my idea and did it first, he has a daugher named Stella). This classic from 1992 was conceived back when the word Trance had a completely different meaning - something to do with a hypnotic environment, a warm atmosphere, regardless the 'label' the music in question would get from the specialized media or the DJs.

The German producer responsible for it mentionned above which was by the way part of Jam & Spoon, Mr. Jam 'El Mar' (born Rolf Ellmer) shared with us his thoughts about "Stella": "Well, how did it happen? It was just a lucky moment. At that time, I was a newbie to this, like a virgin (he laughs). I just did what I liked. You need the blessing of the moment.

Jam El Mar used a Oberheim X-pander (The reso-sound), a Wavestation (for the Pad), Procussion-EMU, an old Akai S-1000 Acoustic Guitar sample, very common those days (to simulate the Guitar sound), and Moby´s legendary "Go" beat loop. "I had this samples of the vocalist Tayah still around - "Hold me... Love-me(...)" - and a Proteus to make the Piano line, that´s it..."

According to Jam El Mar, when Mark Spoon (Markus Löffel R.I.P. 1966-2006) came in that afternoon in the studio, "Stella" was halfway finished - so they did the final things together. Then, Renaat got the playback from the Jam & Spoon duo, this is how everything started.