The highest quality cover scan ever found
フロム・ザ・ハート (From The Heart) is an 6-tracks album released by High Speed Music Team Sharpnel on their own label called Sharpnelsound. Extremely limited, sold at the event called Hardcore Major League Vol. 7 on 7th November 1998. Very small amount of self-made CDr copies were sold and master tracks were subsequently lost due to the hard drive failure. To this day, exclusive tracks featured on this album remain lost.
History of HSMTS[]
高速音楽隊シャープネル (High Speed Music Team Sharpnel) was a hardcore techno group from Tokyo, run by Jea (Ryuta Nakagami), Lemmy, MC-JunQ (also known as Gabba-Eater), La-Quebrata and Quebradora. They are told to be the originators of j- core, the hardcore techno music style, combining the European hardcore music with Japanese pop-culture. J-core tracks feature Japanese TV series and music samples. Hardcore techno were present in Japan before Sharpnel crew appeared, however the very first DJs were focused on imitating the Western style. J-core style was innovative, experimental idea, that gained a huge publicity among indigenous audience.
Ryuta Nakagami and his friends Tanigon and Vicson (collectively known as Project Gabbangelion) released Episode 0:1 YonderDome in 1996, featuring 14 tracks made with music tracker software. Due to lack of wide range distribution, it didn't get much of attention immediately after its premiere. This specific release is considered to be lost nowadays, however a rip the reissue released in 2002 on Sharpnelsound label is relatively easy to obtain.
Ryuta started his label Sharpnelsound and HSMTS group in 1998, releasing their very first album Sharpnel Vs Project Gabbangelion, labelled SRPC-0001. Their second release ダブル ダッチ (Double Dutch) was sold at very small amount before crew decided to eventually forbear from it, due to their dissatisfaction with the content. This release is also considered as lost, but the low quality rip floats on the internet.
The master data files were lost after the hard drive failure shortly after.
From The Heart (SRPC-0002.5)[]
Sharpnelsound released 5 more HSMTS albums, before the transformation of the crew into DJ Sharpnel, which is a collective name for Jea and Lemmy they used until their retirement in 2017. While releasing next albums, they've been using the proper labeling sequence (SRPC-0003, SRPC-0004, etc.). The lost SRPC-0002.5 album were unheard of, until its appearance in booklet of Killingscum – Yonderdome - The Megamixxx Of Sharpnelsound 1-7! (SRPC-0018). Inside a case there is a paper scrap with the Sharpnelsound label timeline, featuring all of their releases, including SRPC-0002.5 that no one has ever heard of.
Sharpnelsound has never mentioned the existence of this CD. None of their website archival snapshots contain any SRPC-0002.5 occurrence.
More information about this release, tracklist and higher quality cover scan can be found in Sharpnelsound Chronicle book, published in 2015. Ryuta reveals, that From The Heart was sold at Hardcore Major League Vol. 7 and its master files were lost along with infamous hard drive incident, hitherto associated with rare Double Dutch album.
All of the tracks featured are exclusive, which means that they don't appear on any other release. Likely enough, none of the owners has ever shared the rip, thus the content of From The Heart (SRPC-0002.5) remains unknown and lost.