Sweden has famously ingested and improved every genre of pop music to spread across the globe and smashrays are no exception. Stake Bo's "Here we go again" is everything you expect from the blue and yellow; click perfect beats, unintelligible yet insanely hooky chorus, flute solo that doesn't blow, and the hills and valleys of pace and emotion that mark a high quality piece of pop music. Yes, in typical Euro fashion they focus so hard on emulation the tricky bits, like rapping in English, that they skip some of the essential elements of lightness and easy joy. Regardless, the song remains a quintessential smashray. [DB]
This track is from 1993, so probably should be considered a proto-ray. Some might balk at it being a Smashray (i.e. no acoustic guitar, too fast, etc.), but it's infectious positivity and sunny flute over breakbeat land it a spot as a precursor to the genre. This track only made it to #109 on the charts in the US. Surprising. Even more surprising is that it was supposedly used in the soundtrack to Alien Autopsy. [Bill]