REMIXES: Best/Worst

craner

craner

Beast of Burden
Sucked all the energy and melody out of the original, and stuck on a phoned-in ODB doodle. Everyone was like, brilliant! But, no. If not the worst, certainly the most over-rated remix of my lifetime.
 
Sectionfive

Sectionfive

bandwagon house
"like babies and pacifiers", lol

Groove Chronicles reworking her intro vocal from that into 'natural' is lush tho
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
trza said:
really disappointed by lack of "worst" remix contributions here. for a best/worst thread.
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I kinda thought the idea was to pick great remixes of shitty songs.


This one started out as a decent keith sweat-produced slow jam

pointless cover version (i always associate it with the ali g film)

chris mack's slinky mini-masterpiece

aaah...thats better
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I think it's amazing when a great remix is made out of an average/shit song, but this is a broad church of a thread encompassing terrible remixes (which are funnier than good ones) and remixes in general.

Are remixes of pop songs still a thing? Obviously in the 90s singles were often released with two or three remixes included.

MK's original burning, a minor house classic


Route 94's remix, a steroidal monster

 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I always rated Another Level slightly higher than I would have cos of Freak Me

They just got knocked down a peg though
 
Sectionfive

Sectionfive

bandwagon house
Danes Bowers' crooning wasn't a whole lot of distance from the Robbie Craig stuff Gurley made so well. The Anthill Mob remix of Be Alone No More is pretty good and probably the most 'cartoon' of all the AM tracks. There is a cringe bit at the end of Channel 4's Pump Up The Volume documentary when garage makes a very brief appearance and somehow Bowers ended up as spokesman for the scene
 
S

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Phil Collins- In The Air

Nice melody, clever arrangement (it's surprisingly arty given how popular it is). Overall a great song.


DJ Screw remix

Both the production and the vocals are a bit tinny and thin on the original. This mix gives them more warmth and in doing so, gives it a bit more of an oceanic feel. Slowed down you also get to hear more of the sounds and how they are treated. The sense of scope, both sonically and emotionally, is widened by this mix.

 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
The original Broken Heart is so forgettable it's not even worth remembering. So let's stick to the Martyn RMX, which in my less cynical days counted as a real tear-jerker:


This came up on a Quietus list of the best dance remixes ever http://thequietus.com/articles/14221-best-dance-remixes

And reading this, by Rory Gibb (a good writer, incidentally), reminded me of how completely subjective music is, and particularly how subjective writing about instrumental music is:

"Sleek digital soul for glassy future cityscapes"

I never heard this tune as remotely 'sleek' or 'digital'. In fact, I always felt the samples had a sort of analogue grain to them that you don't find in a lot of soft-synth music these days. Never conjured visions of 'glassy future cityscapes' either.

This is why, to this day, I can't write about dance music. I feel you end up projecting your metaphoric language onto instrumental music which really can't be explained, only heard. Even Reynolds does this, though he does it peculiarly well.

I probably continue to do this when writing about rap music. It's a constant temptation.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
As a matter of fact, I'm sure I've written something exceedingly poncy about Broken Heart on one of my blogs. I shall try and find it.
 
S

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Corpsey said:
This is why, to this day, I can't write about dance music. I feel you end up projecting your metaphoric language onto instrumental music which really can't be explained, only heard. Even Reynolds does this, though he does it peculiarly well.

I probably continue to do this when writing about rap music. It's a constant temptation.
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It sounds like you're working on the assumption that the lyrics to a song give the correct impression of what the music itself feels like (otherwise you'd be in the exact same spot with rap reviews). I don't really pay much attention to lyrics, but when I do I mostly find a huge discrepancy between the subject matter of the words and my emotional response to the music.

Anything emotional expressed with words is going to be trite in comparison to what can be evoked with melody, harmony, rhythm and timbre. This is compounded by the fact that what an artist has to say has to conform rhythmically and to a rhyme scheme.

Of course that's not to say instrumental music is better than music with words, or even that those words aren't important (insofar as their phonetic qualities are also timbral). But I think any lyricist is essentially "projecting [their] metaphoric language onto... music which really can't be explained, only heard".

In other words, fuck it, review some dance music.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Well, of course, writing about rap music is almost equally contrived. Most people, including me, listen to rap music (like all music) instinctively, without an analytic care in the world. It's only when you write about it that you start to try and explain 'why' you like it or not. TBH music criticism - both the reading and writing of - has ruined music for me a bit.
 
C

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Sucks for you :p

I do find it funny that the expectation is to analyze WHY YOU LIKE IT. I mean, things are designed to be interesting and we're drawn to them, there's nothing remarkable about that, people have been fixating on the most random shit for forever. The trick is trying to comprehend what it does on its own, how it functions, etc.

But that's just me, I have billions of things where I like this, that and the third and the expectation is to 'justify ones taste'.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I feel you might be satirising my entire thread but many a true thing was said in jest


This was my introduction to Bobby Brown as a yoot. I also was a big fan of the Humping Around remix.
 
Sectionfive

Sectionfive

bandwagon house
Trance in the 90s was sort of odd how all the big tunes that eventually ended up on a million compilation CDs around 98 started life as different tunes in the earlier part of the decade. Almost the majority of successful tunes were remixes and then once the money was rolling in were again 'updated' by either the original producer or remixed every two years as styles and tastes moved on.

Like Energy 52 - Cafe del mar started in 1993 before moving out of the techno realm into the big Dutch sound before going prog after the millennium and then eventually Deadmau5 and Villalobos getting a go a recent times :slanted: All completely commercial driven in a way that doesn't really happen with such frequency in any other genre other than oddly, reggae. You would be more likely to get bottled off the decks for this carry on in any other scene.

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