weed - if only u could see

another one can be filed under one of my earliest record purchases and this was still at a time i was purchasing dance-related records that i sort of knew of. it came with the album version and three versions by fade, where one was a radio edit. that is reason i bought the track as i had no clue on this track otherwise, but i can't say that i heard of fade's remixes prior nor did anyone else at the time.

the skinny on the track is that it was the lead single from a project that was by married couple cristina & dan handrabur. the weed moniker was used for one album released in '99 on canadian label nettwerk and the name of the game is atmospheric drum & bass and trip-hop. i would describe it as someone having good looking records and warp records' "the artificial intelligence" series as reference points when making music to prospectively end up on those famous levi's adverts.

"if only u could see" is one of the uptempo tracks from the album and i would say it sits between atmospheric jungle and the music that would be known as trancestep. the soundscapes are busy and this is a track that for the most time has it's focus up top rather than the lower end. it's also a track that starts with all parts upfront and it then simmers down. there are so many sounds in play that i don't know how dan harbinger made it all fit so good.

the only problem with this track (as well as the rest of the album) is what i alluded to prior, is has this mindnumbingly stupid type new age aesthetic embedded. cristina harbinger's vocal is trying to be subdued and the lyrical content is aphorisms mixed with platitudes and they are as deep as the the local kiddie pool.
if you look past that it is a great track. honest.

buy here (junodownload)

i should mention something about the fade remixes, the vocal mix is decent but i think it's a bit to safe. the dub is something is a cracking progressive trancer and is on par with most of the quality tracks from fade's own label.

izel ‎- şak

this was introduced to me through my sister about 6-7 years ago and she said that it sounded familiar but couldn't say what. after i heard the chorus it was no doubt about it that the track was a replay of ofra haza's version of "im nin'alu". i didn't know izel ‎prior to this track and i haven't really heard more than this track but i love it.

turkish isn't a language i understand but i have listened to my share of turkish music during my teenage years, right around tarkan managed to score a hit with "şımarık". anatolian pop music isn any different from the syriac/assyrian music or the arabic habibi pop. the same musical scales, shuffles and grooves are used and of course the repetition of lyrics which i explained in of my prior entries.

the fact that someone takes a familiar melody and rewords it is quite a common thing in the middleeastern musical world. one of my favourite syriac songs, well actually it is technically mardalli, "masale mo khosh", is a rewording of aşık mahsuni şerif's "han sarhoş hancı sarhoş". anyhow "şak" is a really good twist on the '88 played in full mix of "im nin'alu" and is quite catchy, i really have nothing else to say about that the track at hand but i can go on and on about "im nin'alu".

it's been a fascination ever since i heard it the first time on mtv and then that was the '88 version. reason i say '88 version and the likes is because "im nin'alu" has it's origins prior to the first time haza cut the song on record in 1984. the song was from an album where haza recorded modern interpretations of 16th century poetry from rabbi shalom shabazi. the songs are sung in the yeminite dialect of hebrew and arabic and it's this thing that made think that she was actually an arabic singer from the beginning.

the second reason i became fascinated with the song was because of the famous use of the long acapella intro from the '84 version in the coldcut remix of eric b & rakim's "paid in full". the new interest of the song in 1987 when the coldcut remix became a hit sparked a re-release where the song was remixed. the traditional shuffle was replaced with drum machines & breaks and the song and melodies was altered to fit a more western 4/4 timesignature. the song was also altered lyrically where english lyrics was added but i have never managed to like them with respect to the original.

my third reason is because of this clip i found on youtube in '07/'08 where you see a twentyone year old ofra haza singing "im nin'alu". i believe this sparked my interest for "im nin'alu" more than ever as this was the time i heard the song in it's traditional form prior to hearing the version on "yeminite songs". the clip was so fascinating and such a kick for a musicnerd like me as it sparked so many links to places you would never know.



listen here (youtube)

alley cat - sweet spot

a while ago i was digging for tracks to use in an autonomic-styled mix and i found "sweet spot" and liked it. in the end i didn't use it as it didn't work with the other tracks. i didn't know of alley cat prior but that was with three fourths of the tracks i used prior to making that mix. my research was necessary for this genre that i had a clue about but didn't care about. it was mainly done by looking at tracklists from the autonomic podcast and then looking for the tracks and played on juno and listening to related tracks as well.

this was part of the latter but to be honest, it was more a track related to the related tracks as i wouldn't really call this track autonomic, it's just a wee bit wonkier than the usual cuts. the nitty on "sweet spot" was that i liked it because it had a sound that i recognized from the goldie rerubs of garbage's "milk", and i really that bleek style of those remixes.

"sweet spot" got to me as it has this dirty digital sound in it's soundscape. as in it is obviously made with computers but there is a lo-fi approach to the sounds. that doesn't mean that they're murked to sound "organic" and raw but i would think more casiotone or 16-bit audio degraded to 4-bit. this is only a proper description to synthesised sounds as the tr-808 sounds really cut through the sounds.

it's an incredibly well made piece of drum & bass with relentless rhythms, a really deep sub bass and retro-futuristic sounds.

buy here (junodownload)

jill scott - celibacy blues

this song is from jill scott's third album "the real thing: words and sounds vol. 3" and for some reason this is the track that seems to linger in my mind. i do really like the album in it's entirity and i'll reiterate this one more time, i don't usually listen to a lot of albums in full for more than one time and this album was played well over five times.

i think the reason i find this one in my conciousness, well reasons as it it's a really nice track, but it was because i had it pegged to be featured in a really long of mix of mine. the plan was this three hour deep house mix with the first fourtyfive minutes being a sombre downtempo build. i wanted to do the mix in one take and i found that the first fourtyfive minutes was the hardest as i kept making mistakes and my plans kept changing.

"celibacy blues" was the first track in the mix and i don't remember how many attempts i did before scrapping the first part and starting out with mellow 116bpm beats from the getgo. henceforth i heard the song a lot of times and eventually i hated it as i kept analyzing the lyrics and thoughts drifted though my mind. that twelvebar blues progression felt more cliché than it ever was and i do believe it took a long time for me to like this song again.

but this also coincides with another theory i have with music and it is this: if i compare two songs that i've discovered and one is straightforward and likeable all-round and the other one one is harder to swallow or annoys me and only has a fragments of likeability, i'm probably going to listen more to the latter. because you only get so far with safe music and this song isn't safe in my mind.

you can guess from it's title that the topic matter is sexual but i don't know jill scott is being ironic over it. scott says so much and so little in four short verses all over the traditional twelve bar blues groove with a lick of the end of it. i want to really go deeper into analysing the lyrics but i still really don't know what angle she is shooting from. is it self-imposed celibacy and if she gets new batteries for her vibrator, why aren't she using it.

there is a river of questions flooding from my head because it's not overt about what wants to say or not want to say. scott ends the song with this "this here celibacy thing / is working on me..." and i want to say "no i don't think it does" but who am i tell miss jiss scott on what she should be doing with her sexuality.

the song is about two minutes long and it leaves me more puzzled than when i just had my mind blown by mr. sun ra or the likes. that's a telltale sign of a really good song.

buy here (7digital)

sara berg - another night

this was another case of buying a single not really knowing what it sounded like, and picking it up on the strength of the credits as frans carlqvist aka pavan made a remix. i did know of the label, gaymonkey records, as my friend haakon vingelsgaard was set to do a remix for a song for the label but i think it was never finished.

"another night" is a great song and it is sort of an oddity in her catalogue. it was recorded and released between her two albums and it sounded a little differently to them. the songs to be found on her albums was electro-pop in the style of sophia rimheden. meaning proper electro music but also sung vocals in a traditional style, but it's not forced.

berg takes another step with "another night" as more live instrumentation is included in the mix outside of the guitars that is sometimes featured on her albums. saxophone in the shape of alto, tenor and bariton are heard. they are played by lina langendorff, nils berg and thomas backman respectivly. also featured is a trumpet played by mikko piirainen and a trombone played by magnus wiklund.

the brass instruments sit on top of the jittery computer sounds, round bass and compact drum machine sound that sara berg has programmed. berg's own vocals are quite bellowing but in the style of say someone like adele. her presence on the track is quite empowering even though she sounds lethargic at times.

i would say that i bought the cdsingle for the remixes but i like the original the most. but they are really good and on par with the original. pavans stripped downs chiptune version is amazing and melnyk's techno version is a great dancefloor version. simpletons traditional melodic electro version is nice but despite it's name of "night time", i see it more as homelistening music.

buy here (junodownload)

alizée - a contre-courant (azzido da bass remix)

when the force of nature that was alizée hit the musicscene in 2000 with "moi...lolita", i was totally oblivious much like most of sweden as the song wasn't a hit here. for some reason i kept seeing this song everywhere on the intarwebs and initially i didn't care. eventually i heard the song, which was written & composed by french popstar mylène farmer and her longtime collaborator laurent boutonnat.

i still like that song since it's rather catchy but it really rode the nabokov....err britney spears (i.e. the "...one more time" video) aspect to the fullest. she performed with an innocent persona but sang this song about sex as her initial single. even when the rest of her songs and yes, i know this as i do own her first and second album, has nothing with this blatant trick of shock value. the better thing was to have never released that song from the first place as second single "l'alizé" was musically and lyrically much better.

eventually i bought the first album but it was two years after it's release and this was when i heard about second album "mes courant électriques" being in the works. i prefer the second album over the first as it has better songs in general and the first single "j'en ai marre!" was in the class of "l'alizé". it showed farmer and boutonnat doing cookie cutter pop executed really well.

the reason i eventually caught onto alizée was part of the remixes as i heard dj tonka's remix of "l'alizé" and liked it a lot, as well as booka shade & illicits remixes of "gourmandises". which is when the steve helstrip & illicit remixes of "j'en ai marre!" was released i was quite a fan of them, especially the first mentioned. a clean epic trance version that go overboard in it's epic.

second single "j'ai pas vingt ans" had incredibly substandard remixes, which was a shame as the original was a great song. that was saved up with third single "a contre-courant" which had remixes by steve helstrip who did spot-on mellow epic trance piece in style of his own classic "affinity" and azzido da bass. i remember being excited over the helstrip remix initially but found myself playing azzido da bass remixes much more.

azzido da bass was then known for "doom's night" but this was at the time he did more breakbeat related material starting with single "speed". his version strips the track down the core and focuses on the guitars from the original. it also has a tight breakbeat with a murky bassline doing the job at the low end and a slapped bass for the groove.

the track has that perfect blend of rock & roll and rather funky breakbeats that is only pulled off in the breaks scene. it's this strength that carries this track and does a great job at translating the song for the dancefloor.

listen here (youtube)

soom t - dirty money

sometimes i find myself writing about songs that i have listened to over ten years ago and where certain lyrics have found themselves in my conciousness again. in this case it was "aftermath" by the orb, which featured indian/scottish sumati bhardwaj aka mc soom-t/soom t, that has the lines "pouring all your tears in to a whisky & coke / and i see you taking money, why'd go up in smoke".

i did what i usually do then: see what soom t does nowadays and found that she has recorded albums with bus and disrupt. she's also released a few records under her own name and guested on several other tracks but she's been primarily working with german jahtarian dubber disrupt.

a name that i became familiar with after my good friend jan henrik introduced me to his music with the skinny of being mainly chiptune dancehall. that concept was intriguing and it reminded me of swedish producer pavan's pre-skweee excursions. it really fit well into the time when skweee was making a name for itself in the tropical bass music movement.

"dirty money" was one the first tracks i heard after this rediscovery and i liked it from the first second with synthesised squarewave drum roll. the song is really catchy, both musically and lyrically and that hook is brilliant. i cannot classify this in any other way that just chiptune one drop reggae. but the spectrum isn't devoid of bass just because the most of the sounds like it was borrowed from nintendo, that distorted saw bass is thick and heavy.

i had only heard aftermath prior to this one so i don't know when soom t started spitting in patwa but i think she does it really well. i really like her flow as she really has that spark and she rides the beat well, even in a slower riddim like this one. soom t's looks may bring to mind m.i.a. circa the galang era but her voice is much more like someone like leshurr or patra with a higher pitch.

the only hard thing was to decide on which track from the dirty money i was going to write about as while the title track is brilliant, so is "survivor" and "doobee dee doo". the latter has soom t going off really hard over disrupts riddim which has a bassline that sometimes sound like the james brown's moog noodling from the intro from fred wesley & the jb's "blow your head"

mis-teeq - one night stand (agent x dub mix)

when this track was released originally it was a song i liked and i believe i had it on an r&b compilation. it did however leave my conciousness for a large number of years until i was back on my garage kick again. "one night stand" had remixes by sunship, agent x & dubaholics for the uk garage crowd and the two first mentioned was breakbeat and dubaholics did the 4x4 mix.

i'm not keen on the dubaholics remix and i think sunship remix is just decent. those two uses the verses unlike the agent x remix which only uses alesha dixon's rapped elements and the hook. another noted things is that dubaholics was the only one that didn't get a special callout from dixon saying that this is the sunship or agent x on the remix.

the drums and the bass was also another reason i prefered agent x's version over sunships. there is so much punch in those drums and the bassline is wicked. i think this one might have been the peaktime/big room cut compared to sunships as the drops are much bigger. it also uses this keyboardsequence that is supposed to be horns or strings that play in the chord progression of uk garage classic "ripgroove".

listen here (youtube)

mayssam nahas - nar nar

this track came into my attention a little while after i'd started listening to arabic music and i still doublecheck the year it was released every once a while. reason being that it's a song that musically really went outside of the arabic scale of references. i'm not talking about something like nelly makdessy's "ya yomma" or elissa's "ayami bik" which are made with commercial european dance music as a centre-point with traditional arabic instrumentation worked with it.

no this one is completely void of arabic musicality besides, you know, nahas singing in said language. the musical origin sounds more like a cheiron production circa '95-'97 because there is no real difference between this one and the backstreet boys' "get down (you're the one for me)" or 'n sync's "tearing up my heart".

the plan was maybe that they were actually trying to something with crossover appeal to the european market, but why they would use a sound that wasn't being done and hadn't been made in over 5-6 years baffles me. even the video for the song were wasn't the typical arabic video and that itself is a horrible dated mess with bluescreen effects that wasn't going to fool anyone of "high production values", even in '03 when this song was released.

now i've taken the track down so much, so the logical answer is do i like it? yes, i do. it's insanely catchy and mayssam nahas can sing quite well. the fact that it sounds like a rejected cheiron production doesn't bother me because i love a large number of those tracks.

buy here (itunes)

chords - the boxer

there was a big buzz with swedish rapper chords' latest album "looped state of album" when he told that he was going to do it all alone. the album is third as chords but it's actually his sixth or seventh if you count his swedish reggae project helt off and a us version/re-release of his first album.

jens resch aka chords has been a prolific figure within the swedish hiphop scene and has been quite associated with jason "timbuktu" diakité. timbuktu is also the only guestappearance on the album as he lays the hook on "insomnia". his own works has been quite on the emotional side since '03 but no one expected to hear an album like this.

the links to kanye west's "808 and heartbreaks" sans tr-808 & autotune since this is a break-up album and it's the most famous example of it's kind in the last ten years. however in a more domestic link i would say that two albums are sonically closer and that would be producer embee's "tellings from solitaria" and albin gromer's album

when i say that there was a big fuss about this record i really mean, the album the has been so hugged and amped up, that anyone who dares so say something bad about the record would be slayed. on my first listen of the album it thought, yes this is good but, the hype was just senseless. i was already a bit reluctant to the album since i didn't like the single "the dude" and thought the b-sides "song for you" and "wipe those tears" was better. the latter of which featured philadelphians & the roots-associates dice raw & charles p. bailey.

the songs on the album that i liked the most was the starter "drift away", "insomnia", "one man show", the latter half of "robots" and "the boxer". the firstmentioned is probably destined to be done in a burial-esque refix as in the style of the "wayfairing stranger" remix. the latter is the one i'm highlighting and it's the albums only instrumental and something really grabbed me with it.

it isn't by any stretch the most original track as the chordprogression sounds a combination of "caravan" and another standard which i cannot name at the moment. the sound of it is what backpacker beatsmiths would make if they wanted to get a bit jazzy, granted that they could do more than just sample moody jazz. there is however a whole load of detail into the production and as in most of the albums, resch really went all out in the making of the record.

the blues and jazz influences are heard right from the first minute as the reverbed keys set the mood and the slow rhythm set the pace. resch's melodies are underlined with a deep bassline and it's topped off with lovely keyboards and organs that fit the spectrum perfectly. chords also slips in a highpitched patch on the last minute that sounds a bit west coast sound because of twee but warped nature. in this context it's kind of a more lowkey version of the moog sound that is known as the "the funky worm".

resch really did a great job on this song and his whole album and it's well recommended.

buy here (itunes)

popsie - rough enough (redtop's ruffer'n'tuffer remix)

i really don't know why i bought this single, "rough enough" was never any of the songs i liked from swedish group popsie. i did like "single" and "latin lover" but the lyrics and the chorus for "rough enough" was stupid. i do know that it's something i bought for next to nothing and that the single had 8 versions, with two remixes (and edits/dubs) by redtop & jj. the latter was the more approachable pop-house remix and was decent and the former took the less vocal harder club route.

redtops remix starts with the first line of the chorus in a vocoder and then after a little while you hear an acidline emerging and squelching away. that sets the tone for track along with the rhythmic offbeat-bassline as redtop bangs in an awesomely cheesy not quite hard house but not quite trancer. the end result is basically the klubbheads sound in the late nineties but with less suck.

this remix follows in a very tried and tested formula of what to do when you have a track that you'd want to sell to a market that would never buy it in it's normal state. as little is taken from the song at hand and the rest is in the bin. it's a gamble as not everyone is going to like it and i used to think more or these kinds of revamps when i was younger. i've grown weary when it's a remix of something i like and i can hear that there are useful parts and they were slept on. however the original of this is terrible and redtop did make something decent out of it.



by the way if anyone wonders, is this the same redtop that is a frequent remixer on the scene now? yes it is.

rinneradio - atlandisk

first caught wind of the name rinneradio through my good friend jyri lehtinen who is quick to recommend good electronic music by finnish acts. i was given the skinny that the project revolves around finnish saxophonist tapani rinne and that members of the ensemble are interchangeable. the music can be described as fusion jazz but depending on what mode rinne is feeling and who he's collaborating with it comes off different.

this track is from 2001 album "nao" which has rinne working with producers veikki erkola and jori hulkkonen. the album as whole is quite a mixed bag and it's quite audible in which tracks are produced by who. i prefer the hulkkonen produced track but do really the ercola produced "repo" and the title track.

"atlandisk" can be described as an garnier's "the man with the red face" meets choice's "acid eiffel" but with bleek arctic melodics. built around a shuffled percussion groove with a chunky acidlike bassline, the track is dominated with lighter synth sounds, long pads and tapani rinne who adds romantic like saxophone accents to the track.

rinne takes the backseat in this track until the break where there is a solo moment but it is clear that track is all abou the groove. someone else might say there is a whole lot of detroit influence in this track but i can't hear it. i really think it's more garnier-inspired rather than juan atkins.

buy here (itunes)

bobby ewing - sunlight (king brain instrumental mix)

i found the single for "sunlight" in the crates and i bought it on the strength that it had remixes by artifical funk & dj asle, meaning i did not know of the song said prior. many of the singles i buy in the bins are promo singles and are cased in cardboard, hence they take little space. but they also include the most bang for the buck and in these neck of the woods you will/would find these singles released either by the big labels or smaller ones like swedish promotion agency/recordlabel playground music or danish label big star / iceberg, the former of which are part of caoz promotions.

big star/icebergs operation was mainly licensing club tracks for the northern european market, but ever once a while they would release things by danish dance acts. like freeloader's "pure devotion", örtz's "secret garden" & "we don't talk" and this one by someone that went under the name of bobby ewing. i have no clue on who really is behind the name but i can tell you that the song in it's original form feels derivative of plenty of other songs like madonna's "holiday" and dance nation's "sunshine" which themselves are derivative of the whispers' "the beat goes on" and daft punk's "one more time" respectively.

the single as mentioned included mixes by fellow danish act artificial funk which i know was driving the single as the dub was played a bit by a number of dj's. asle's versions go into the more sidechain & filter direction and the "sunny dub" delves a bit into the eighties influence of the original. then there is two version by king brain or dietmar andreas maier who's been making dance music since the early 90's. i decided to highlight his version as his version is the actual rip-off of the bunch, i mean in all other cases it's borrowing of ideas but this is blatant.

i listened to the remix and recognised that bounce & the sounds on the instant, it sort of sounded like dj gregory's "tropical soundclash". i love that track and think the world of it. it's quite brilliant how it uses that high-life styled guitar and keys onto this bumpy four on the floor. maier really copied the track but he did it really good and this is why i wouldn't completely deride it. the dark break that maier added with the filthy saw synth stabs works to the tracks advantage.

yann fontaine - dirty week-end

"dirty week-end" comes one of two fontaine records that i own, the second of which is "my love will surround" on amenti. the "implication & champagne ep" is a four tracker with a theme of shuffled percussion, bongo drums, affected organs and reverbed vocal samples. i bought the record a while ago and it was a blind buy but i had heard of yann fontaine prior with the quite deep "open your eyes".

this track kicks off with a jangly shaker and conga groove and is later joined with a steady bassline and additional percussive sounds. the organ go in after a minute and it's deeper stab of sorts that is delayed and phased. it eventually forms a melodic stucture but serves more as the companion to the bassline as some lighter rhodes sounds are introduced and a more organ sounds but from higher keys.

for some reason it reminds me of junior vasquez but with less circuit and more groove. it is also the track from the ep that is most peaktime of the bunch. the rest have their time either in the builds or with taking it down. great tools in the hands of any house dj.

buy here (trackitdown)

dj trace - lost entity (remix)

discovered this track since ishkur had a sample on his guide and it's the type of atmospheric drum & bass that does it for all the time. it consists of an a few breaks and most notably the amen, a pad arrangement and some sub bass. also included is the typical off-kilter type melody that comes out of nowhere, mostly in the middle or the second part of the song, and breaks the loveydovey mood that you are into.

to be real honest, this is quite a weak version of the song compared to the two mixes from the original 1993 release, called london version & new york version. this remix from '95 sounds more like the new york version and is a more polished updated mix.

the pads in the new york mix doesn't have the chord progression that trace worked in as it just alternates between the two first notes. the bassline is a bit heavier  and that weird melody comes in much earlier and has a bigger presence. the london mix however is just all sorts of evil in the best way possible and here the pads are taken off completely for hoovers. it's very ravey and mental but i get shivers up my spine when i listen to it.

the logical question would be, why not highlight the london or new york mix? well i have no relation to them and i think the '95 remix is much better produced and oh did i mention those pads. heartbreakingly beautiful.

listen here (youtube)

lemon jelly - return to patagonia

this one is from lemon jelly's incredible "lost horizons" album, an album that is known for three things. 1) the not quite digipak cardboard casing is larger than the regular album 2) it's really stylish artwork 3) it's the album the most wonderfully insane song on the planet, being "nice weather for ducks".

even though i few all music like something i could dj with, i know that this was made as an album and follows a great structure and the tracks are all connected with eachother. "return to patagonia" is followed and succeeded by "nice weather for ducks" and "ramblin' man" which both are in the same melodic stylings but this one is a different style. it is also along with ducks, the tracks that could fit into any 125-135 bpm type set and henceforth are dancefloor numbers.

infact "return to patagonia" reminds me a lot of chaser's "life in loisiada", which is amongst of the first tracks i wrote about in this incarnation of the blog. i am however not saying it's a ripoff in anyway since it's only the first half of "life in loisiada" that has the similarities and it's mainly because of the beat. chances are that both have sampled something that i have no clue about. that first half of "life in loisiada" is the best since the bassline has a portamento that is a little to crazy for the tune itself.

anyhow about this song then and to describe it in a word it would be a "builder", that's a dj term for those tracks that relentlessly builds without peaking. sure this track has that crazy part in the middle where they flip some samples and sounds but the track gains layer after layer in a great manner. the jazz groove that lemon jelly has used for the track's foundation holds such great tension.

when it's all finished, 9minutes have gone and you ushered off with the final echoes of the grooves reverb trail and raw beats and then the cd plays the duck song. masterfully done.

buy here (junodownload)

sasse - took my love (featuring big bully)

i heard sasse's own detroit mix on soundcloud and initially i was going to write about that since i quite liked it on the first, second and third listen but as i stalled my entry on it i had a change of heart. after hearing the original version it was no doubt that this was the song to be highlighted and the reason was the bassline. i will say that the detroit mix has it's charm but i can easily listen to company b's "fascinated" if i want to hear that percussion groove that's prominent.

the track kicks off in typical slower techy house manner with a deep tr-808 kick and rim shot and then there is there is lower frequency murmur that first appears once every bar. then after the break there is a chordal structure to it and it forms as the bassline from loleatta holloway's "we're getting stronger" which i didn't know until i heard whitney houston's big comeback single "million dollar bill".

you also hear the vocal stylings of big bully who've been on a number of deeper techno numbers including mikael stravösand's "no turning back". i want to describe his effort on this track as a sleazy robert owens but it's with this sleaze he pulls it off. the track also features some nice acid wiggle and i believe it's actually throughout the track but that it's most noticable halfway in when the midrangey melody comes in.

finlands pride and joy sasse comes through big with this track and i love it.

buy here (beatport)

hannah williams and the tastemakers - (when are you gonna) say you're mine

i was really surprised when i heard "work it out" and wrote an over the moon entry that seemed to resonate well with the band and hannah williams in particularly. never the less i liked it so much i felt i had to do an entry when the album dropped and i thought it was going to be released in two weeks but that was for the physical release. so when the band announced on facebook that i could get it already from bandcamp, i did my skim through the tracks and wasn't disappointed, henceforth it was a done deal.

as an single entity it's a great album going by three full listen through, the themes of the songs is held up well and downright funky tracks are combined with heartfelt blues & soul numbers. the band is on point and i wanna commend the horn section consisting of chloe harvey on trumpet and gina tratt on saxophone and hillman mondegreens guitar that really accentuate the tracks. not taking anything from the rhythm section consisting of jimi needles on drums, dougie taylor on bass and james graham on organ/keys.

the songs that hit i liked the most was "i'm a good woman", "the kitchen strut" & "(when are you gonna) say you're mine". the first mentioned which has williams' going at it a powerful upbeat stax like number about how to deal a spouse that has mistreating her. "the kitchen strut" comes from the school of the j.b.'s and from the initial vocal "i'm gonna tell you a story" and the bongo-driven rhythm, it's a winner.

"(when are you gonna) say you're mine" is one of the ballads  and follows another ballad, being "washed up". what made really single out this one is that heavy vocal register of williams that i fell in love with "work it out". it honestly sounds country in the beginning, like dolly parton's slower numbers. the james graham's organ and mondegreen's strummed guitar set that tone along williams softer tone but then it changes.

right after you hear hannah bellowing voice belt out "i'm not used to this" and "boy you're making me sweat" with so much emphasis on the last words, i am reminded of that end moment of "work it out". following that it isn't dolly parton anymore but it's more or a case of the gospel type blues of bessie smith, infact in my head i can hear jay-z saying "take 'em to church".

it becomes heavier and heavier and it's a song for repeated listens. i love it so much and i think the band should pat yourself on the back for it.

buy here (bandcamp)


more highlights of the album include the album closer "things to come", an instrumental and is a nice light shuffle that include chloe harvey really belting it out for her solo spot. the great part is the title which says so much that there are more in the works and that you are going to want to hear the next release as well.

also the jb's styled "get it (part 1)" with williams doing the roles of james brown and telling the band to break it down near the end. after it's counted down you hear needles funky drumming and gina tratt doing a killer solo. i don't know who pulls off the bobby byrd like "yeahs" in many of the songs when williams does call & response like james brown but it's quite spot on.

last note is that i wish the world for the band and i hope they can provide the listening audience with more great music like this.

missy elliott - 4 my people (basement jaxx all night dub)

i bought the cd-single for the basement jaxx remixes of "4 my people" a little while after it was released and for reasons i don't know. because it wasn't a song i liked, original or remix, even though i had danced to it in various partys and gettogethers because it had a good rhythm and i generally like anything basement jaxx. but it wasn't something that i had to have and i know i bought it full price and not from the bargainbin or the secondhand stores.

fastforward about five or six years and then i started to like the main version but i also listened to the whole single and the versions that caught my ear was the two dubs. note i'm not saying that as if i didn't like elliott as an emcee, i think the world of her as a producer, artist, lyricist and emcee but this wasn't her best song from the getgo. anyhow the two dubs included was a techy acid dub that clocks in at ten and a half minutes and is a track to be played at two am.

the second dub was this one which is more uk garage than the rowdy house of basement jaxx and it's brilliant. from the start with some tight drums and a looped up segment of missy saying "for", where it then drops into the call out in the intro from the original. the bass goes in when it kicks in again and you hear a simplified version of the bassline but with more punch and depth. along with it is some rhythmical tones that you would hear in a wookie production but with less atonality. vocal samples from the song is also used but sporadically and it's a few key lines that fit the track.

great remix and it pains me that it took me over ten years to understand it's brilliance but as i have written before, yunno i didn't get garage before and i don't want to constantly write it. i am already quite repeating myself as i tend to write the same intro, the same lyrical meat and then some bullshit disguised as a review or something.

josé gonzález - crosses (jori hulkkonen remix)

first time i heard this song was in november of 2003 and i was listening to national radio and "p3 dans" was on. at that time "crosses" was the big track as it became and was still quite the indie-hit. if i'm going to be honest, i didn't like it in the beginning. saw the video for the song and thought "why i am watching to this third rate bob dylan", but then i actually listened to the song and loved it.

the jori hulkkonen remix was of crosses was one that i took to liking quite fast and i was after it after hearing it the first time. i think the original imperial release with the hulkkonen remix sold out fast and i got my hands on it the following year when it was on kass recordings. the original release had a remix of "hints" by swedish producer mau on the flip but on kass it was backed up two remixes of the cover of the knife's "heartbeats"
by label-owner eric ericksson, more known as spatio and rocketboy/rocketman,

it was kind of a sleeper and few knew of it outside of the swedish house-scene until i believe it was taken to wmc the following year and became one of the talked about tracks. the thing with translating the song into a club context is weird even though it should work easy since it's devoid of drums and gonzález plays the guitar quite rhythmic.

putting it into words how it shouldn't work is quite hard because i don't even know myself what to say but out of all the remixes, both official and bootleg, this one manages to do the best job at it. hulkkonen's drum programming and the way he uses the guitar in the buildup is exactly what the track needs for this context. the breakdown with the small guitarsolo is another one and the additional pads that is present sets the track off right for it to be that torch song it is originally.

i have probably listened to this song, both in it's original form and the hulkkonen remix, over a thousand times over the years and i have still not grown tired of it.

buy here (itunes)