Kraze - The Party (house, 1988)

One of my favourite old skool anthems. The original mix from 1988, released by MCA records The big man behind ’Kraze’ is the Haitian born Richard Jean Laurent. Living in New York, he began songwriting and performing in 1985. The time that house was the ’new big thing’ in underground clubs in the US. Richard Laurent’s career took off in the legendary ’Paradise Garage’-club in New York City, where his first performances were a big succes. A few months later he formed the house-act ’Moonfou’ and released his first tracks on vinyl. His second release “Shut Up“ was an instant hit, selling copies his first time out. After this first big success in the US and with house breaking in Europe, Richard Laurent decided to start another act together with his two sisters and ex-Madonna boyfriend Norris Borroughs: Kraze. Big Beat recordings signed Kraze after hearing the demo-version of ’The Party’. It was only the second release for this famous independent house-label and the first big international breakthrough for Big Beat Recordings. ’The Party’ became an international club- and chart-hit, selling 850,000 copies worldwide in the first release. It even made it to the pop-charts in Europe, peaking for instance at number 29 in the UK Top 40 and at number 32 in the Dutch Top 40. This was all before house exploded in Europe, which made Kraze’s ’The Party’ one of the first house-tracks to reach international chart-success. The big success led to an international Kraze-tour, which took them to Australia, the UK, Amsterdam, Ireland, France, Switzerland, Germany, Japan and Tunisia. Kraze had more clubhits in the years following, but ’The Party’ was by far the biggest. It became a house-classic and even nearly 25 years after its release, people in clubs are still dancing to this tune. It was a hit again in 2006, in the remix of Milk & Sugar. Kraze did some performances with Milk & Sugar in 2006, when the track hit the charts again in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. But these days Kraze (Richard Laurent) is better known as Earthman for his Bio Sonic compositions. The theory behind ultrasound (healing and connecting through vocal tones, frequencies, and sonic vibrations) always had his intrest and Richard Laurent decided to fully dedicade to this work in the late nineties. One of the other Kraze-members Norris Borroughs is nowadays still ’famous’ because he was one of the first boyfriends of pop-legend Madonna and even had an influence on her career. He is mentioned and interviewed in several Madonna-biographies. He met Madonna in the winter of 1978, when she was studying with choreograper Pearl Lang. Norris dated Madonna for several months and after they stopped dating, he introduced Madonna to his friend Dan Gilroy, who started her first band. Prior to that time, she had been strictly a dancer. From that point, she left Gilroy with bassist Gary Burke and former boyfriend Steve Bray, who produced the tracks that got Madonna her first record deal. (homemade vid, there’s no ’official video’ for this tune)