Friday 7 September 2012

trip poem - the act of life (chuck cogan phooked up da mix)

another cratedig find, but technically it was in a cardboardbox, and like many i had no clue on what it was and bought it on the strength of credits. "the act of life" was a swedish release and had versions by swedish producers chuck cogan & playmaker and it seemed interesting. later i found out that this was the first release on label found you recordings that was meant to be dance oriented. but when this single didn't lead to any substantial buzz the label became more jazz & folk related.

the song itself is a fairly decent house track but it's inoffensive and is more radio than club-oriented and i think there are better tracks that do that. playmaker did the big dancefloor romper and i think this version would have been the one i had focused on normally. but i do have that sore spot for broken beat and i've mentioned that if the rhythm is really messed up, i'm quite likely to get obsessed with that one.

cogan's version strips the melodic foundation from the original and focuses on a couple of sounds that are the backbone of the whole track. the sounds are worked in repetition and are built on the core of three note rhodes ostinato. the rhythmic track is a heavily shuffled broken beat that directly responds to the keys. cogan's version at a glance seems lacking of ideas as it works within repetion but it's structure and how cogan flipped the inoffensive original is remarkable. i really like this one and it fits well with in deep house and broken beat sets. only bad part is that the bass isn't heavier.

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