#m|a|r|r|s

Smash Hits (September 23 - October 6, 1987)

Pump Up The Volume by M|A|R|R|S

Let’s rewind the tape to 1987 and turn the volume all the way up. Today’s one hit wonder pick is Pump Up The Volume by M|A|R|R|S — a track that didn’t just top charts across the globe but helped shift the soundscape of electronic music into the mainstream. This was more than a song; it was a flashpoint moment for sampling, beats, and the birth of a new groove for dance floors everywhere.

M|A|R|R|S wasn’t your typical pop act — in fact, it was a one-off collaboration between two UK-based alternative acts: Colourbox and A.R. Kane. The group was short-lived, but their sole single made a seismic impact. Inspired by burgeoning hip-hop techniques and electronic sampling, the track features cuts from Public Enemy, Eric B. & Rakim, and more — all stitched together in bold, genre-bending fashion.

Pump up the volume, dance, dance

It was daring. It was futuristic. And it was a clear signpost for where dance music was headed. Despite reaching No. 1 in the UK and making it into the US Top 20, M|A|R|R|S never released another track, making them a quintessential one hit wonder — but what a hit it was. The legacy of Pump Up The Volume still echoes in club sets, retro playlists, and the DNA of modern electronic music.

"Nothing short of wholesale theft!" fumed Pete Waterman.

Part of 1000 Coolest, fifty of the greatest and most popular songs in history.

Writers: Martyn Young, Steve Young 1987

Samples are as old as music itself: the first notes were made by banging rocks together. We can be sure that Ug got annoyed when he heard Og copying the way he banged rocks. Ug snarked to his friends that Og wasn't even the best rock-banger in The Eetles.

Much much later, serious composers like Stockhausen and Boulez and Tablet took short extracts of other works, and interpolated these tapes into other compositions. They'd invented what we now call “sampling”. Buchanan and Goodman (qv) took this process into the pop charts.

A court case found that sampling in this manner was legal, and sampling would become a regular feature as soon as the technology allows. Thirty years later, "samplers" were standard parts of synthesisers: they'd record a short piece of sound into solid-state memory, and allow you to replay it, pitch it up and down, change the speed.

4AD, the legendary indie label, had a lot of bands that made cutting-edge records, but absolutely no bands that sold enough to have regular hits. Colourbox, one of these art pop bands, made a percussion-led house track, instrumental apart from an Eric B and Rakim sample that gave "Pump up the volume" its name. Another 4AD band, AR Kane, were allowed to fiddle with the track, and added a wah-wah guitar overdub. On the literal flip side, Colourbox added effects and a drum machine to AR Kane's "Anitina (the first time I see she dance)".

Released to the clubs in early summer 1987, "Pump up the volume" gathered interest and a top 40 place when released - which, for 4AD, was spectacular success. A commercial remix by CJ Mackintosh and Dave Dorrell followed, adding in lots of other samples by acts like The Bar-Kays, Public Enemy, the Criminal Element Orchestra, and many many more. It flew off the shelves.

One of the samples was from Stock Aitken Waterman's current hit "Roadblock"; the pop production trio successfully got their bit removed, and stopped the presses on "Pump up the volume" for a couple of days - enough to give "Never gonna give you up" (qv) an extra week at number one.

"Pump up the volume" was the first in a line of sample-heavy records over the subsequent months: Krush's "House arrest" was remixed with extra samples, followed by Bomb the Bass's "Beat dis", Coldcut's "Doctorin' the house", the "Theme from S-Express", and that's just the top five hits. And from that success, radio became happier to play fast dance music, it wasn't seen as scary or frightening any more.

Record Label History: 4AD Records (BAD 707)

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