herbie - right type of mood (dragonfly's jungle mix)

this is yet another track which was amongst the first records i bought back in the early noughties and i picked it up since i love the original. for some reason it still lingers in my head whenever i take the stockholm subway, especially since the video was shot in one of the carts. it only happens though when i go on the older type trains.

but for this remix it wasn't really a version i cared about until recently when i dug the track up since i also own it on cd-single. this is a cheiron/swemix product as it was produced by denniz pop & max martin and included remixes by douglas carr, amadin (john amatiello & kristian lundin) and mårten attling (dragonfly/mindbender).

the latter wasn't part of the cheiron collective but was part of stockholms dance scene on the more hardcore/techno site but also did remixes for some cheiron artists. attling's remix strip away the eurodance influences and goes for an atmospheric ragga jungle rerub. since herbie used to spit in that raggamuffin style it  the beats fit his vocal much better but i think it's all a matter of taste.

all of the remixes are quite dated in their style but this one holds up the best considering what it tries to do. there is a slight resurgence with this type of material and i can't really say that the original's euro-synths or douglas carr's staler house beats are relevant in this day and age.

attling opens his remix with herbie chriclow's opening hype ups over some nice pads but goes quickly into some hard-hitting drum breaks. the breaks used are "think" and "funky mule" but the latter are used to back up the "think" break. as usual with this type of jungle the bass is really subby and hits quite hard with it's deep sine stabs.

the track goes halfway into a ravey type break where you hear a time stretched "rude boy" vocal and some messed up organ sounds. the good thing is that these type of sections can really date a track but it doesn't go overboard and this is part of what makes this work 15+ years after it was originally released.

listen here (soundcloud)