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LABEL: Sheffield Tunes RELEASE DATE: May 26, 2017 GENRE: Hard Trance, Dance, Jumpstyle
// review by SoyBomb

Bore-a! Bore-a! Bore-a!

Back once again in preparation for not only another album in 2017 but also for their 25th anniversary tour "Wild & Wicked", that Hamburg-erly trio of frontman H.P. Baxxter, Michael Simon, and Phil Speiser have returned from about a year of musical silence with "Bora! Bora! Bora!", a single out of the blue.

Actually, it's more like out of the past. To be fair, Scooter has ripped, sampled, and straight-up snatched-up melodies like they were cosmic bubbles of oxygen and they were astronauts gasping for air in space. Oftentimes, the end result is actually a stark improvement over the original. Take 2003's hit single The Night. Scooter grabbed the chorus from the 1984 Valerie Dore song of the same name and incorporated it into one of their "stadium techno" hits. And thank goodness they pumped up the BPM because Valerie Dore's version is so slow, it could put a herd of bison to peaceful slumber for days. But this time around, Scooter has done the unthinkable: they actually ripped off...themselves!

The main melody of Bora! Bora! Bora! comes not only from "Catch The Fox", a 1985 Den Harrow song, but it was also used in "The United Vibe" off of one of Scooter's previous albums a decade earlier, The Ultimate Aural Orgasm. But between the two versions, I'll gladly take the decade-old version. At least IT had some hard driving power within. Scooter must have left the power for Bora! in their other pants because it's definitely not here.

The tune starts promisingly: the twinkly melody, followed by some basic jumpstyle-esque beats and a mild buzzing bassline to lay the foundation for some random shouts by H.P. Baxxter about nothing in particular, as to be expected. And H.P. also throws out some d&ooml;p-d&ooml;p-d&oomlp shouts over the melody, just as he did in many iconic Scooter tunes of olde. Unfortunately, the chorus is pretty much where the song falls flat because it's so much weaker than what they were capable of ten years earlier, with flatter bass and the melody being crooned out by what I can only describe as an ostrich getting kicked in the backside. The United Vibe had a synth that could strip the siding off a barn; Bora! Bora! Bora! can barely spook timid livestock. It also lacks a decent C-part, though I'll give a minor commendation for at least trying to add some subtle padded harmony that wasn't in the original. But above all, the worst part is that the whole production feels a bit rushed and unfinished. Looking back on Scooter history, so many of their tunes were rich, full, and rockin'. Bora! simply isn't; there's a certain unmistakable emptiness to it. The single also comes with an Extended Mix, but, as with many recent Scooter "extended" mixes, it's still pretty short and contributes little of note.

Scooter proclaimed this as the ultimate return to jumpstyle, after having fiddled around with it for a few years before abandoning it in favour of more modern trends. Bora! Bora! Bora! certainly makes me want to jump — out a window. Where's the freshness? Here's hoping their next album has more... mmmm, what's the word... ah, yes: effort.


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