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| quote: | -Limited Edition Sleeve Notes-
01. Grand National - Talk Amongst Yourselves
I picked up this record at the end of the summer (of '03) and it
lived in my stereo for months. I fell in love with it because it
reminded me of so much music from my childhood... bands like America
and The Police. It's quirky British pop at its best. When I spoke
to Grand National they gave me free choice of anything from the
album, which was a really tough decision... there is so much great
music to choose from.
02. Shpongle - Dorset Perception
Dorset Perception will be familiar to anyone who saw me DJ last year;
it was the last song in my set for a lot of the tour. This track
is more of a rearrangement than a full remix. Apart from the guitars
and vocals there were a lot of sounds in the original that I thought
were electronic. But, when I got the parts I realised it was all live
instrumentation. Even the bass was made from a cello. The original
parts are all so amazing and there are so many of them that it will
probably spawn some dubs.
03. Petter - These Days
This record was one of my favourites from last year. I could have
taken These Days off in many different directions. It could have
been an ambient intro to the album or I could have done a much more
banging version at its original tempo, but when we dropped it to
124bpm we realized it was the same tempo and key as What Are You To
Me? The original sounds I got from Petter were so rich that we ended
up taking a lot of time nerding around with sound design. Petter
is a remarkable young producer who has quite a future ahead of him
if he keeps turning tracks out like this one.
04. UNKLE - What Are You To Me?
What Are You To Me is a bridge track, altered very little from the
original. The acapella part fell in perfectly over These Days and
carries the record into...
05. The Youngsters - Smile
Smile has been in my box since it was released a couple of years
ago and it always comes out on those special nights. When I got
the idea for Involver, Smile was one of the first tracks that came
to mind. The bass line from the original is absolutely killer so
I left that alone, left the vocals as they were, but we reprogrammed
the drums and Charlie spaced it out with some beautiful keyboards.
Again, the original sounds were so full and rich that we had a lot
to play around with.
06. Spooky - Belong
Another record that has been in my box for a couple years...
Charlie May's original mixes had two distinct directions. One had
a summery house vibe - which I absolutely loved - and my original
idea was to turn that up and make it a much bigger track. But
when we started playing around with all the original parts we got
such amazing sounds and textures from Charlie's ambient mix that
the remix went off in a much more spaced out and melancholic
direction. I'd still like to do another version of his house mix.
07. UNKLE - In A State
I originally remixed this record in 2003 and I didn't want to just
include that remix as it was from last year. Initially, my thought
was to use it as a bridge track, dropping in the acapella vocal
and the guitar part to carry the Spooky track into Burma...
However, I really wanted to mess around with the vocal as the song
was already pretty we knwon in clubland. I broke the vocals up
into about 1,000 pieces and then put it together. Once I'd done
that to the vocal I really felt like we should finish it as a full
dub.
08. Lostep - Burma
I absolutely love Lostep's original. Definitely one of my favourite
tracks from last year and another one of the tracks that I thought
of immediately when I came up with the Involver idea. Once Luke
and Phil had sent me the original parts I realized it had potential
to be a much bigger sounding track than their quite laid back
original mix. At first I had it in mind to do a straight up four
to the floor club mix. We played around with a few different
directions but couldn't seem to get it right. Simon came up with
a wicked bass hook, we went back to breakbeats and the track
came alive.
09. Felix Da Housecat - Watching Cars Go By
I pulled this track from Felix's upcoming record. The whole album
has a quirky, eccentric 80s pop vibe but I picked this track because
of its punk house edge. This one turned out to be more of a
rearrangment than a full remix, but we got some great results doing
some mad processing to the vocal, which has given the remix a unique
flavour. At the end I was struggling a bit to get the beats up from
132 to 140bpm which is where the Ulrich track is at. Most of the
transitions between tracks on the album have bpm rises in them.
I spent a lot of time when we were pulling the final master together
trying to disguise those increases in tempo. However, doing an
8bpm rise smoothly was going to be impossible so we decided to
speed Felix's track to 560bpm turning the whole track into high
hats and allowing Ulrich's track to drop perfectly in.
10. Ulrich Schnauss - On My Own
On My Own was the first track I worked on and it started out as a
mash up bootleg. I just pulled the original master off his album,
we chopped it up, processed it, and wrote a track to fit underneath
it, basically beefing up the drums and bass from his original.
I sent the results to Ulrich and he loved it. He then sent me all
the original parts to work with so we gradually went through the
track and replaced noises bit by bit with the original parts.
Ulrich's production is amazing... you'd think it was full of guitars
but when I got the original sessions I realized everything came from
synths. He has a really unique way of programming and processing
synths to sound like warm fuzzy guitars... sort of the inverse
surprise we got from working on the Shpongle track. |
smile has such a good bass hook towards the end...
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mmmm.. delicious...
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