joujouka - are you elovetric? (thomas p. heckmann remix)

this one i heard after i checked out a starecase remix a few years ago as i was going through their remixes at the time and in this case joujouka had done a remake of "relax" by frankie goes to hollywood. it was nice but i didn't see any point of playing it when i could be playing their remix of dj remy's "serious damage" which was the same thing but better. with regards to this remix it was a case of liking it's driving buzzing feel and it's fitting into the sets i was playing.

i really thought that heckmann had brought the new wave influence from his own brand of driving techno but that stemmed from joujouka's original set of tracks. i know this project as a psytrance project but much like say eat static i know that they change guidelines from one release to another. this has probably to do with tsuyoshi suzuki's willing to work in anything in his sets.

at the time when the album "are you elovetric?" was released in '03 suzuki had gone deep into his own personal influences which was synth, body and new wave music from the eighties. there is actually a quite a strong link between this kind of music and goa trance or trance in general if you research where goa trance stems from.

"are you elovetric?" is a song in the traditional or mainstream sense of the word with the verse/chorus/verse structure, guitars and all that jazz. guitars has always been a part of joujoukas sound but in the first record they were used like in the context of psytrance. heckmann strips away these elements and keeps the chords, the buzzing basslines and some of the melodies.

it's refitted with a four on the floor kickdrum and the 16th note bassline is even more pulsating and buzzes away with great force. straightforward drumprogramming is also on the agenda as various tr-909 hats and rides are brought on in usual driving techno manners. the spiralling but short melody that appears in the background is of the original more of a central element as the track goes into it's middle part. heckmann also uses effects for the fills instead of drum hits and as i've played this in plenty of sets, i've enjoyed these in context of mixing. basically proper banging techno music.

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