mandy moore - in my pocket

so before mandy moore decided she was going to drop the sugary blond pop princess look she had a few good tracks, i haven't heard any of her albums but i do remember the first time i heard "candy" and i think it was on mtv. this was during that whole boom of american pop singers, girlgroups and boygroups who had all of their tracks made by a collective of swedish producers (the cheiron crew for the most part). "candy" sounded a lot like robyn's '96 single "do you know (what it takes)" which i really liked back in the day.

youtube (this is the original swedish video and it's horrendous, the american one is much better)

mandy moore's track also had an amazing hex hector remix which had a trancy breakdown whom which got i hooked on. it was during that phase that hex hector was incorporating a lot of influences from the epic trance that was big in the clubs. his remix of jennifer lopez' "waiting for tonight" for instance is as far as i'm concerned epic trance and is a mighty fine track. one of my favourites of all time actually.

youtube

but anyways i didn't know about "in my pocket" until i heard the ending of it on mtv and it was some deal where it didn't announce what it was called at the end (which mtv always tends to do). but i heard that arabic-sounding loop and was intrigued and it further tickled my mind when i heard swedish/greek act antique's album and heard that same loop in one of the closing track "westoriental trip"

buy here (7digital) | youtube

ever since then i was sure that the loop used in "in my pocket" was a sample but no one seems to where the origin is and i've asked people who listen to more arabic music than me and they have no clue. one person said that it doesn't really sound proper arabic and it's probably made by some european or whatever who composed it to sound "middle eastern". i don't really buy that theory but it's plausible. there is that theory of the traditional asian/chinese riff (yunno the one in the intro to carl douglas' "kung fu fighting") is not asian at all but what a westerner thought that typical oriental music sounds like.

but yeah, my search to find the source will go and i thought for a long time that i would never find the name for mandy moores song until i one day in (the equivalence of) high school and i was transferring songs for my minidisc (yeah, i was that broke to still have a minidisc in 2002 when everyone else had discmans with rewritable discs or mp3players) and i heard the song on my mates mp3player and thought "finally found the name of this one". it's a really good song and i know other people think that thunderpuss knocked out a really great remix but i don't think much of it. they didn't use the loop or the melodics of the loop which brought it down for me.

buy here (amazon)* | youtube

* i know you can't buy from amazon's digital service outside of u.s. territory but it's not available on 7digital who i like better. but it's itunes anyways, not that people buy the tunes but i tend to put directions on where to buy the tunes since it's only fair.