Nik C, one third of legendary production trio Bush Babies, tells us in his own words the story behind the track pioneered by Tony De Vit and Boy George, which ahs just been re-released on Tidy Trax featuring the original remixes to compliment the brand new remixes released earlier.
“Rewind to the long hot summer of 1995, when all three of us were still living in Brighton…
I had a recording studio in the back room of my house, and had been collaborating with Rod on dance tracks since 1993. Rod and I originally met via a small ad, both of us owned studio kit, so we decided to pool our resources. By 1995, we’d already been collaborating for a couple of years, and had produced a number of tracks, but nothing much had really happened. Then one day, a random conversation between Paul and Rod in a Brighton bar led to the suggestion of a collaboration between the three of us. By this stage, Paul had already released Dex ‘What Is Going On’, on Dave Randall’s Boom Records.
When the three of us initially met up in my studio, we tried working on a track that Rod and myself had already made a start on, but that didn’t really go anywhere, so we dumped that idea, and started something from scratch. That new track became ‘Delicious’. We worked on it over a number of afternoons during that hot summer. As soon as we had written the big uplifting keyboard riff, we knew we had something special!
Although my studio was well stocked with equipment, compared to what is available nowadays you would probably say the kit we were using was quite primitive; an Atari computer, rackmount samplers and analog synths. Even a reel to reel multitrack got used, because we only had basic samplers that soon ran out of memory.
Each of us brought a different sensibility to the track. Paul was listening to a lot of hard house, I had a background in disco and hi-nrg, whilst Rod was listening to the poppier end of ‘hardbag’, (or whatever it was called at the time).
The track was played to Dave Randall, who immediately signed us up to release the track on Boom Records in July 1996. Our poppier original mix was backed with a remix by Dave Randall and Neill Cain. It was this remix that gained the most club play.
Initial sales were encouraging, with strong support from Trax Records in Soho, and DJ support from the likes of Tony De Vit, Pete Wardman, John ‘OO’ Fleming and Steve Thomas.
The spoken word sample on Delicious was lifted from an old Boy George b-side. Dave Randall sent a promo copy to George, who loved the track and started to include it in his DJ sets. Apparently, George had been playing the track for some time, before he even noticed the sample!
The George connection proved to be very fortuitous for us, as he then included Delicious on his Ministry Of Sound – The Annual II mix. When we wrote Delicious, we knew we had something good, but had no expectations about how well it would do. We certainly didn’t expect to end up on a compilation that sold just short of a million copies.
In 1998, Dave Randall re-released Delicious on Chug n Bump Records, over two pieces of vinyl, this time with additional remixes from Knuckleheadz, Paul King (F1), John ‘OO’ Fleming (his first ever remix), Bubblebass and Captain Tinrib. By this time, Delicious had become a bit of a Trade classic, and was popping up all over the place – it was even used on breakfast TV to accompany a fashion makeover.
For various complicated reasons, the three of us never got round to releasing a follow-up to Delicious, and went our separate ways. But looking back today, we’re chuffed that people still remember the track and love it, and that it’s regarded as a classic.”
Stream & download the brand new remixes of Delicious here: https://fanlink.to/cGcv
