Tony De Vit — Global Underground 001: Tel Aviv

Release details

• ArtistTony De Vit
• Year1996
• LabelBoxed / Global Underground
• Format2 × CD
• SeriesGlobal Underground
• Catalogue numberGU001CD

This isn’t the Global Underground you remember

No Sasha drifting through San Francisco. No Digweed spending twenty minutes tightening the screws. No Nick Warren easing you into a deep progressive journey. Tony De Vit comes flying through the bloody door.

Global Underground 001: Tel Aviv is fast, hard, ravey and almost hilariously different from the progressive-house identity the series would develop later. That is exactly why you should hear it.

The original UK Boxed release dates to 1996 as GU001CD, a 2×CD set with 21 tracks running just over two hours. More importantly, it is number one in the Global Underground City Series. The template did not exist yet, so De Vit could simply sound like De Vit.

CD1 gives you about five seconds to get comfortable

E-Motion — I Stand Alone in the Sharp Vocal Mix opens with energy already pushing underneath it. Kitty Lips — Keep Rockin and Natural Born Grooves — Forerunners in the Experts Mix make the first fifteen minutes feel ridiculously alive.

Porn Kings — Up To No Good is the obvious memory trigger, but inside GU001 it is not being wheeled out as a 90s dance classic. It is just another weapon. The Experts — Take You There and Mangroove — Get Loose keep the pressure high without making the pressure identical.

DJ Supreme — Tha Wild Style in the Klubheads Hardstyle Mix is where things get properly rowdy. Brain Bashers — Biggest and Baddest and Sister Suck — Gotta Get It Up push the set further into the hard-house/NRG identity people associate with De Vit.

E-Motion — Naughty North, Sexy South in Tony’s own remix puts his fingerprints directly onto the music, then EJ Doubell — Axiatonal in the Galaxian Infusion Mix gives the end of CD1 something stranger and more spacious instead of an obvious victory lap.

CD2 somehow finds another gear

Dave Randall — South and Antic — Digital Mass do not provide a polite reset. The night simply carries on. Kinky — Everybody in the De Vit Trade Mix brings the sound of his Trade world directly into the release: pumped up, fast and designed to work immediately.

Committee — Welcome and Bush Babies feat. Dex — Delicious keep the set fun rather than turning hard music into a serious endurance test. Then Tony De Vit — Are You All Ready arrives. If one of your own records is going to sit near the centre of the album that launched Global Underground, it might as well sound this much like you.

Must — Understood pulls the focus straight back into the set, Jon the Dentist — Global Phases becomes one of those less-famous records that makes owning the full mix worthwhile, and Format One — Elevate pushes towards the final statement.

Tony De Vit — I Don’t Care closes the whole release. Nine minutes. His record. His ending. The title almost feels like a statement: GU001 is not worried whether it fits the series that came afterwards because that series did not exist yet.

GU001 matters because Global Underground could still be anything

The first release could still be hard house, NRG and pumping European club records. Listen to GU001 and then Nick Warren’s Prague and it feels like changing clubs completely. Same emerging series, different musical argument.

That makes Tel Aviv an outlier, and that is the selling point. Later GU releases tell the progressive-house story people usually remember. Tel Aviv proves the series could have gone somewhere else.

Tony being Tony matters more now

De Vit died in 1998 aged 40. His recorded catalogue is finite, and Tel Aviv preserves him while he was actively shaping and playing this music. There is no need to turn the page sentimental. The music does not need it.

What matters is that GU001 captures him doing exactly what his reputation suggests he did best: going for it. The dated bits are often the best bits. Tha Wild Style. Biggest and Baddest. Gotta Get It Up. Are You All Ready. This is club music with absolutely no embarrassment about being club music.

The complete mix is the reason to own it

Are You All Ready on its own is a Tony De Vit record. Inside GU001, it is the point where the DJ you have followed for ninety minutes finally steps forward as producer. I Don’t Care on its own is another track. Inside GU001, it is the nine-minute final statement.

That is why the physical release still makes sense. Not because it is old. Not because of the case. Because it preserves the first Global Underground mix as one complete thing: the vocal opening, the tougher first-disc run, De Vit’s remix, the second disc getting harder, Are You All Ready, Global Phases, Elevate and I Don’t Care closing it.

Related on The Mix Archive

• GU003 Prague Collector’s Shelf
• Global Underground and the sense of place
• What is Progressive House?
• Global Underground collection

Want GU001 Tel Aviv back in your collection?

If I Stand Alone, Forerunners, Up To No Good, Tha Wild Style, Naughty North Sexy South, Everybody, Are You All Ready, Global Phases or I Don’t Care has set something off, follow it. GU001 belongs on the shelf because Tony De Vit’s two-hour sequence still feels like a complete, uncompromising night — not because somebody called it rare.