dj marky & xrs - butterfly

a few days ago i was listening to this one, the dj marky & xrs' "butterfly" and the two following tracks that came up on foobars shuffle was dj koze's "mariposa" and sunday brunch's "fjäril". at first i thought the coincidence with dj marky & xrs and sunday brunch's tracks being titled similarily was fun, but after running "mariposa" in google translate it was borderline spooky.

now you may have to know a touch of spanish or swedish but all of these tracks are called "butterfly" and it had me thinking about doing an entry on them. all of them are in different genres and have nothing in common musically really but the coincidence in titles were too much fun. so here goes and first off i'll talk about dj marky & xrs's "butterfly".

in all truthfulness i like "the wizard" much more which the flip on the single but this is a cracking liquid roller. "butterfly" is based heavily around roy ayers ubiquity's song "searching". most hiphop-heads will know that "searching" was also sampled by pete rock & cl smooth back in '94 on the "main ingredient" album. however marky & xrs took the hook as their sample base and this uses more of the melodic elements. the combination of the powerful drums and packing bass and roy ayers electric piano and vibraphone is a winning one.

buy here (beatport)

with "fjäril" it is a track that i've mainly heard when browsing through sunday brunch's album "no resistance" and i've noted it as it's the saxophone track on the record. soundwise it's in line with most of the album's content with the sort of blending of deeper house, techno & broken beats. for some reason it reminds me of lionel richie's "all night long" because the intro for that uses this conga rhythm and it's also present in this one but backed up with more percussion.

rhythmically it's a broken beat of sorts that sounds like a four on the floor with the two and fours being swung a bit back. the kick however doesn't come in at first but it's started out with a shaker & triangle groove that has some phasing on and the distinct sound of jesper dahlbäck's icy synths. the first pad plays a motif that is prevalent in the first half of the track and works with the groove.

anders paulsson's saxophone that also start the track out plays in accents but is given a small solo in the breakdown. part of me doesn't like how smooth jazz and romantic it sounds at times but when it's set to a nice funky techno/house rhythm it's easier to tolerate.

buy here (beatport)

"mariposa" was something that i heard in a set once and was entranced by that groove. it's nice weird techno which starts out with low-key but is something that grows. you hear that as a long mysterious pad is slowly fading in along with more of the melodic elements of the song. when the hi-hats come in to play you hear sampled car sounds, in particular when you lock the doors.

part of me wonders how anyone would react to this element if one was moving in a car and the music is blaring loudly. i know from experience that my cousin didn't like the sampled car sounds in turkish pop singer mustafa sandal's "araba", when we were listening to it on the autobahn heading from germany to the netherlands.

anyhow as the track is progressing you hear this with really pulsating synths that grows in volume and it almost sounds helicopter like. koze drops the rest of the track except for the kick and the dissonant background sound along with the pulsating rhythm is really trippy. this is something that could be used in so many ways but i would say that taking it down or transitioning to something different would be effective. lovely warm weird techno music.

buy here (beatport)