REWIND: Souvlaki - 'Inferno' (Fired Up Mix)

Attack the dancefloor like a bulldozer... It's the Friday Banger. Being a very young club DJ in the mid 90s meant that an enthusiasm for dance music ran alongside my love of Britpop. In 1996-1997 there was something of a trend for lively tunes that combined samples of disco songs with sped up bits of rap, and this hyperactive chunk of floorfilling well and truly puts today's so-called dance hits to shame. I'm not sure why he named himself after a Greek fast food dish, but Souvlaki was the alias of producer Mark Summers, who first had a hit in 1991 with the rave classic 'Summer's Magic', which reached number 17 in the UK charts. The excellent 'Inferno' appeared in 1996 and was a Top 20 hit when it was given a wider release the following year. It was the first release on the Polygram offshoot Wonderboy Records and turned out to be the only track that Summers released under the Souvlaki name. 

As well as releasing lots of music under many different pseudonyms, Summers set up the world's first sample replay company. The Scorccio label's release of 'Inferno' in July 1996 originally featured a sample of Dan Hartman's Relight My Fire', until Summers was told that he would either have to pay out a big sum of cash or re-record the sample. Summers decided on the latter option, the first time he had ever undertaken such a challenge. He got it sounding so close to the original that PolyGram/Wonderboy didn't believe it was a rerecording. Summers established Scorccio as the world's first ever sample replay service, and in 1996 took his venture into the next stage by working for a large number of major and independent music labels, DJs, producers and recording artists. Ministry of Sound, Defected, Positiva, Universal, Virgin, Sony-BMG (amongst others) all became regular clients of Scorccio.