Born in Queens, New York, USA in 1971, Joey Beltram is techno (and house) royalty, being one of the earliest people outside the midwest to release on Derrick May’s Transmat record label and, like many of his cohort in the second wave of techno, has recorded under a plethora of different aliases. His two best known songs are Energy Flash, which gives its name to some of the editions of music critic Simon Reynolds’ memoir of the rave era (also sold as Generation Ecstasy), and Mentasm, the riff and timbre of which drawing on influences from the early days of Belgian techno has had important lasting effects in the spheres of hardcore rave music as well as drum & bass. However, none of aforementioned is the focus of this writeup.
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1994 was a fairly busy year for Joey Beltram. Two four trackers under his own name in the form of the Fuzz Tracks EP (XSEP3) on X-Sight Records and The Caliber EP (WAP 49) on Warp Records, for Visible Records he put out three tracker as Odyssey Nine titled Drums of Orbit (vis 102) an alias he’d also use for the limited edition 10” Forklift [b/w] Drama 20 (vis-116) on the same label, the A-side of which would reappear in remixed form on NovaMute in a few years. In the same year, Beltram also appeared with three techno offerings on a split EP called Lost Entity appearing opposite a garage house side by Glenn “Sweety G” Toby (PM-6206) on one of many labels called Permanent Records, collaborated with his fellow New Yorker Damon Wild in a duo called XP on a three track EP called Ground Hog (SW05), and also dropped a 2x12” on Chicago’s mythic Trax Records called The Beltram Re-Releases 1989-1991 (TX 5027).
The album is legible as a loveletter to acid house, yet it is one could characterize as techno without much controversy. Surely, a number of these tracky slabs could be mixed into any number of house tunes from the early days of this canonical publisher, and the continued history and synergy of techno and house as two sides of the same coin (a future article/expanding scratchpad on that is on its way) yet the feeling seems to come down more than a little squarely on the techno “side”. Despite the fact that Joey Beltram had indeed previously worked with Trax to put out his album Dance Generator the year before, many consider the title of this later effort a hoax akin to the likes of Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (if not a direct nod to it), itself a work from a young producer around the same age. Richard James was born in the summer of the same year, who established himself on R & S in the same cohort as Beltram, and later became and one of Warp Records’ best sellers.
And speaking of Warp, in 1994, they published Joey Beltram’s The Caliber EP (WAP 49), which doesn’t feel much like a lot what one often associates Beltram with. The title track feels a lot more like something from ‘90 or ‘91, and some of the earliest stages of his career, like a call back to 1991’s The Omen from his project Program 2 Beltram with Program 2 (Gennaro Le Fosse and Victor Calderone), nor does Calibre sound much like the sound of Warp Records of 1994 and beyond. That said, it certainly would be hard not to see fit in to their classic era and the rest of the EP feels more like a slightly less interesting continuation of his work in 1993 as Sintox -- In the Abyss (23-003) on Frankfurt 23, which in itself is a masterclass of a (sub)genre which remains contentious among many technoheads even now in 2025, tech trance.
Joey Beltram’s duo with Damon Wild as XP, the three track Ground Hog EP is not the finest work from either gentleman, nor their best collaboration, but I still strongly prefer it over an EP of Beltram’s whose title I enjoy far more, Drums of Orbit, one under his Odyssey Nine alias. Like the Fuzz Tracks EP of the same year, Drums of Orbit has its moments but there also moments where certain drum machine hits feel a bit too loud or emphasized in a way I’m somewhat less fond of. The title track is one of my least favourite Beltram things in an era when I love so much else that it sticks out all the more for me. Next is the aptly named Vamp which would not feel out of place alongside some Detroit techno of a similar vintage, though Beltram has done many more enjoyable things in the same year, not least of which is the release of the superior Forklift [b/w] Drama 20 10”. The A-side of which is one of the my favourite things he ever released, and the B-side, an all too short tease of some searing hot acid. Packaged with this limited edition 10” single was a notice of an upcoming full length by Odyssey Nine, which never seems to have materialized. Two things may have taken its place: One was a highly unusual album by Joey Beltram under his own name, also on Visible Records from the same year, which is markedly different to anything else he ever released, titled Aonox (vis 110), which was reissued by Leiras’ label Ownlife. Stay tuned for a full article entirely about Aonox to come.
1995’s Places (Tresor 34) is a 8 track full length 2xLP with absolutely zero filler released on the much loved German label Tresor under his own name partially inspired by Beltram’s love of graffiti culture and his car. Here's an excellent interview where he goes through the pieces with some details for each. Sonically, it’s minimal yet full sounding and overflowing with quintessential, unmistakeable techno flavour. The album would make for an excellent introduction to techno for any neophyte and also a must for any collection without it.
Here are some brief thoughts of mine on each cut since it is not only one of Joey Beltram’s finest hours, but one of the great techno albums:
The next year, 1996, was another busy one for Joey Beltram. The much beloved Belgian label R & S which he had his name on now released a CD and 2xLP compiling some of his older works, as part of their Classics series, under catalog number RS 96100. More relevant to this writeup, however, on the British label NovaMute, was the start of Joey Beltram’s alias jb³ all featuring beautiful uncredited artwork in an incredibly tasteful graphic line art style by the London designer Paul Nicholson, who is best known for his work creating the iconic Aphex Twin logo. These releases (all but one from ‘96) are the Close Grind 2xLP (NoMu50LP), the Believer 12” (12NoMu19), Forklift (The Remixes) 12” (12NoMu49) which featured a bonus mix by Damon Wild on the CD version and an EP the next year. Nicholson’s artwork/illustration for them maintain an aesthetic continuity which is very pleasing and for my own tastes, some of my favourite in all of techno. Along with the previous year’s Places under his own name, Close Grind (which is the sole album under the alias jb³) is one of my absolute favourite techno full lengths.
Please bear with me as I give another brief track by track:
In 1997 was another jb³ 12”, one which marked the tail end of the NovaMute run: the Through the Mixer EP (12NoMu55), featuring three remixed versions of cuts found on Close Grind: a remix of Curb by Dave Angel (who had been part of the same cohort as Joey Beltram’s earliest days on R&S and founded the excellent Rotation Records), a remix of Back Porch by Robert Armani, and a remix of Time by The Advent’s Cisco Ferreira before the name synonymous with his solo works. Probably the contemporaneously most popular track from the run of jb³ on NovaMute was Luke Slater’s remix of Forklift. It was featured on Claude Young’s Dexit mixtape also from 1996, where it sat between Jeff Mills’ Cobalt and Ratio’s Rectum, DJ Shufflemaster’s Bleep Mix #261: Maniac Love, Tokyo (which despite its release in 2013 was recorded in 1997), where it was found after after Surgeon’s The Box and before Ben Sims’ Remanipulator, Gayle San’s Fine Audio DJ Mix Series Vol. 2 from 1998, where it closed out the mix following one of the Encounter series by Outline (James Ruskin & Richard Polson), Carl Cox’s The Ultimate Sound of B.A.S.E. between Throb’s Intensiven and Mike Dearborn’s Remix of Aphrohead’s Legion, Westbam’s instalment of the DJF DJ Freundschaft series, alongside Time Zone’s World Destruction and Westbam’s own Sumo Clock.
1998 (as Joey Beltram) Ball Park A0 Ball Park (Original) 4:16 B1 Ball Park (Steve Bicknell Remix) 5:04 B2 DJ Rush - Ball Park (Rush Beat Mix) 3:55 (as SW37) SW37 A0 5:22 B0 5:14
In 1998, Joey Beltram returned to Tresor to release the Ball Park 12” (Tresor 90), which provides more of a track of the same name which was originally featured on the fifth volume of the label’s selftitled compilation series, where it sat between Planet Energy by Detroit’s Scan 7 and Naohisa Furusawa’s E++. In the same year, Joey Beltram would release an anoymous 12” of two unnamed cuts on Damon Wild’s Synewave with a green and white colour scheme. Only years later was it revealed that SW37 was the techno heavyweight Joey Beltram. Neither the original pressing nor subsequent reprints or digital editions list him any credit.