C. J. Bolland
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
C. J. Bolland (born Christian Jay Bolland, 18 June 1971, Stockton-on-Tees, England, UK) is a British electronic music producer and remixer.
His family moved from Yorkshire to Antwerp, Belgium when he was three years old. He began his career at a very young age with R&S Records, and released some tracks under different aliases, such as 'Space Opera', 'The Project', 'Ravesignal' and 'Pulse'.
In his younger years he was strongly influenced by the Belgian underground scene of new wave, electro and body music (Front 242, Neon Judgement, The Klinik). His first productions were aired in the early eighties on Belgium's Liaisons Dangereuses radio show. CJ was one of the first music producers to be signed to the legendary R&S record label (Ghent). The first release on R&S was 'Do That Dance' in 1989. Other well known tracks from this period are the turbo charged rave anthem 'Horsepower' on '91's 'Ravesignal III' EP and '92's 'Fourth Sign' LP which included the hypnotic 'Camargue' and the galloping 'Night Breed'.
A second album for R&S was to follow - '95's 'Electronic Highway' - but by late 1994, CJ had already left R&S to sign an exclusive 5-album deal with Internal/Polygram. The first of these LPs was '96's 'The Analogue Theatre'.
He is best known for his song "Sugar Is Sweeter" which hit #1 in the United States Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in 1996. Bolland is also a prolific remixer with a long resumé, including songs by Orbital, Depeche Mode, Moby, The Prodigy and Tori Amos.
His song "The Prophet", sampling Willem Defoe in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ is a club hit.
He is also notable as the first artist to release an album in the DJ-Kicks series for Studio !K7 independent record label, entitled DJ-Kicks: C.J. Bolland. The album was released on September 4 1995.
In 2002 he started his own record label called Mole Records.
February 2004 saw the release of The Body Gave You Everything, the debut album by Magnus, a dance music/pop collaborative project with Tom Barman, founder and singer for the Belgian rock band, dEUS.
December 2006 Bolland released a solo album calledThe 5th Sign with the Belgian online record label, The Wack Attack Barrack. He's currently working on a new album, which is to be released in the summer of 2008.
