2007 that was (by Tim)

Tim looking at your choices here and listening to many of the tracks I haven't heard before, I'll say it: Tim likes it LUSH!

The Kylie remix is truly great. It reminds me of "Jumpin Jumpin (Azza's Remix)" from 2000 with the way it luxuriously straddles R&B and techno and latin groove (maybe this is what "Balearic" has always meant and I just never knew!) It's got this warm feel but with a kind of hard candy gloss to it, too. I never want it to stop, and it almost never does!

IT - "Women in the Toilet" is such a delicate, flawless track - very much in the vein of "Rej" by Ame, which was in turn in the vein of "Beau Mot Plage" by Isolée, but each of these has successfully stripped more and more away from this baroque, dubby, quaver-wiggle template so that we're left with this, a minimal trance-style ideal version of the form. It also has a lot in common with "In White Rooms". All of these tracks have a brooding quality but the ticking mechanics of the bass and beat suggests a kind of inevitability of routine. I dunno, for the video I imagine a person who lives alone, looking at his or her room, cloudy morning light coming in through the window, they look at their watch, they may not ever see this place again...

Tracer "lushness" is something I've thought about a lot this year. I think it's always been something I rate higher than most others but this year took that to ridiculous extremes. Which is maybe why "balearic" feels so useful as an organising principle - sort of an 'International Secret Society of Lushes' kind of thing going on.

"To continue kvetching, “People Without Love” is my least fave AMoO tune."

I really didn't like it to begin with, or liked parts of it and hated others perhaps. But when I listened to this album repeatedly for the purposes of writing an album review, "People Without Love" began to seem like the most interesting track on there, certainly my favourite on the second EP (though "Arc of Abraham" is pretty ace as well if I remember correctly) - and much less obvious (as in "I see what you're doing here") than I first thought. "Caroline" is of course a tune about an almost Lacanian obsession, a kind of hate/love cycle (following the verses and the choruses) except all that Buckingham has on the "love" scale is the repeated chant of the woman's name. And then AMO1's added arrangement really teases out the underlying melancholy and desperation of the original song. So it's not clear whether they're siding with the preacher against "Caroline" or with "Caroline" against the preacher, or if they ultimately think the two arguments can be sublated.

Redshape remix of Zander VT is a BANGER

Goldmine of tunes here! Thanks Tim F.

Tough Alliance deserve to be huge.

re: "space battle techno"

what about smith'n'hack's "space warrior"??

PS I like how "Then & Before (Redshape Remix)" by Zander VT works itself up into a totally Red Planet/UR frenzy.

the Studio remix of '2 Hearts' may as well remove her vocals entirely - they feel just left in as a formality altho i like the slight dub aspect of this (would've preferred this to be empthasised). i don't think the track particularly magnifies the song's theme, lush as it is - it intentionally goes beyond that i guess. it's a very pleasant treatment but maybe it's too breezy and could sound more exotic or intoxicating. but unlike many i kinda like 'X' so...

the Zander VT remix is still too subtle for me!

you should check the redshape remix of markus enochson 'red coffe', it's like the soundtrack to a galactic victory march. so epic

all this galactic space music talk has reminded me of "third stone from the sun" by third electric

-- http://www.sendspace.com/file/dt80vl

how the fuck did i miss this thread

Thanks Tim, really enjoying your discussion.

Re Stefan Goldmann I really liked his remix of Blackjoy's 'Untitled' which worked similar territory to the IT remix with possibly a little more swing. His first release on Macro was great too, although it maybe lacked the touches that made 'lunatic fringe' stand out.

the Zander VT remix is still too subtle for me!

-- blueski, Wednesday, February 6, 2008 10:03 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Link

???
subtle is maybe the last word i'd use. banger!!!

To be fair it's so elaborately mapped out that the bangerishness of the second half comes a bit of a surprise. Maybe Steve thinks it could stand to be more Vitalic?

BTW it occured to me that nu deep house vs space battle techno is basically the first part of Underworld's "Cups" versus the second part of Underworld's "Cups".

PS. Bee I haven't heard that remix! Will have to check it out.

Also haven't heard "Space Warrior" :-(

i love how just adding the high hats at the climax of the ZVT remix makes it sound even larger

big big lol at finally having the screwed voice on "grass is always greener" coalesce into... bob ross!!

""Can't Be Serious" is a cover of this right?"

yes! i was trying for ages to work out where i had heard it before - it's on dj harvey's sarcastic mix. thanks dude!

the second part of Underworld's "Cups"

kinda breaksy

Tim i don't suppose you can do a spot on '07 Breaks ;)

going back to The Tough Alliance, getting big A R Kane vibes more than anything else

they're on Ramosi's label!!

woooo @ this thread!

i like "people without love" a lot, but it is easy to see why it might turn people off: too preachy, too hippy.

it is nice to see the "vuoi vuoi me" remix get a shout out. definitely a singular remix from an already unique producer although his remix of "atoms" comes close to that style.

"space warrior" is so good, too! it's like so much pastiche that it has come out the other side. i completely forgot about that track. what about their remix for herbert? (not that it's space battle techno, but it was huge last year and i didn't see it mentioned around here much if at all.)

Haha I'm amazed anyone could think Redshape was too subtle for anything. Maybe that's because the first time I heard it, it was playing very loudly indeed.

Should we have a 'space battle techno' thread, for new and old stuff in this vein?

Also I totally disagree wrt removing the vocal from the Studio mix of Two Hearts, it works entirely because it offers an entirely new and (IMO) more appropriate backing for Kylie's vocals. That bit where she goes "looks good in the sunshine" and you hear this Pure Shores-esque beach-cafe-at-sunset bleepy noise gets me every time.

Matt, try Ink & Needle's "Seven":

http://www.zshare.net/audio/7311397364e74e/

Amox & Atle - A Witch's Kiss (Ink & Needle Remix):

http://www.zshare.net/audio/73134200c380ce/

Tim have you heard Stefan Goldmann's remix of 3rd Face - Canto Della Liberta? It's from 2004 I think, although I didn't know this when I downloaded it expecting more along the Lunatic Fringe/Woman In Toilet lines. It opens up into an enormous space battle about half way through!

so happy to see you boosting polow's get up remix. it makes for a great sequel to "promise".

Balearic Part 2:

Perhaps the other key difference between Balearic and disco-punk is the way in which the two styles pursue their strategies of intensification. Disco-punk approaches its desired fusion very seriously, combining urgent disco rhythms with the most honest-to-goodness rock signifiers it can think of (jagged guitars, shrieked vocals, songs about girls and politics), as if to say: “I can be both of these things absolutely without compromise.” Balearic’s strategy is more oblique, preferring to fail on both rock and dance music’s terms, as if by doing so it could establish a new yardstick. As dance music it’s too torpid, decadent and tentative; as rock it’s simultaneously blanched-out and excessively manicured. A lot of my favourite records this year felt a bit like inspired failures: on Kathy Diamond’s gorgeous ballad “I Need You”, the arrangement drifts from deep sublimated bass riffs into an unnecessarily loud and showy percussion work-out, the yawning gap between Kathy’s delicacy and the robustness of the drums coming on like some lurid combination of alcohol and pink lemonade I can’t stay away from.

Kathy Diamond – I Need You
http://www.zshare.net/audio/7019331e142227/

Of course at the edges “Balearic” begins to break down and become nothing more than a convenient tag for describing stuff I liked that otherwise I’d have to group separately. But the genre works this way too: Erol Alkan’s Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve project doesn’t have much of a solid aesthetic identity beyond a gimmicky love of backwards guitar – used to great effect on the sighing, surround-sound folk of their remix of Findley Brown’s “Losing the Will to Survive”. The remix of Midlake’s “Roscoe” is even more subtle, more like a proper 80s extended mix than a remix (it actually reminds me of the extended mixes The Cure had done for the singles from Disintegration): all shimmering keyboards and slippery backwards guitar being subsumed into the glorious harmonies of the original song. Perhaps Alkan and his co-producer Richard Norris knew they didn’t have to do much to perfect “Roscoe”: as a rock song I find this deeply treasurable and inscrutably affecting.

Midlake – Roscoe (Beyond the Wizard’s Sleeve Remix)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/72147876f273a4/

The Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve remix of Badly Drawn Boy’s “Promises” is more radical: you can hear the duo trying and failing to produce something brilliant from less sterling material (A Mountain of One’s effort is much better, but “effort” is the right word – its overblown avalanche of sound feels like hard work for creator and listener alike). Reverso 68 succeed where Alkan and Norris fail, concocting moody MOR disco with all the duo’s classic touches – hushed and reverent strings, breathy swirls of synthesiser, heartpiercing Chic guitar, breezy bongo patterns and a bassline as old and as constant as the universe itself.

The first piece I wrote on “Balearic revivalism” was almost three years ago, talking about Reverso 68 remixes and their deep forest vibe: humid, luscious and decadent in excessive plushness. The not-terribly-prolific production team have hardly changed their sound in this time, but they haven’t needed to – like spiders at the centre of an enormous web, they’ve been able to sit and watch dance music come to them. “Promises” isn’t their best work but it’s perhaps their ultimate, their effortless disco grooves finding a perfect partner in Badly Drawn Boy’s vocals – here sounding particularly ghostly and melancholy as they glance off Reverso 68’s carefree arrangement. If much of Reverso 68’s work is unabashedly utopian, this feels conflicted, wondering: does dancing your cares away somehow dishonour what you care about?

Badly Drawn Boy – Promises (Reverso 68 Remix)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/7215764dcf9792/

In many ways, all this nu-balearic is a feminised (perhaps effete) take on the sort of hoary “beardo disco” offered by Rub’n’Tug or DJ Harvey, but with beardo’s rock signifiers stripped of their proletariat masculinity in favour of androgynous and worldly refinement – if the hypothetical pinnacle of beardo disco would be a DJ edit of Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock’n’Roll” (play it next to Zazu’s “Captain Starlight” for maximum thrills), Balearic already found its ideal standard of soft-hands androgyny in Todd Terje’s astonishingly pretty, dub-drenched remix of Paul Simon’s “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” (although I reckon a disco version of The Dream Academy’s “Life in a Northern Town” would also work nicely – apart from Dario G, I mean). Of course, the two sounds overlap significantly, not least because one senses that the pomo bad taste running through them both is born of knowing too much music history rather than not enough: widely accepted consensus picks begin to seem too obvious, while the dodgy marginalia of genres acquire an aura of comparative freshness and unpredictability.

Paul Simon – Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes (Tangoterje Edit)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/737340969272d0/

“Marginalia” might be overstating it somewhat: “Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes” is hardly obscure. But in a sense it’s contextually marginal: hitherto, it was by no means clear that this song and hip dancefloors had much if anything to do with one another, and the Paul Simon’s 80s output has long been verboten as a reference point for new artists (if anything, the sudden success of Vampire Weekend supports rather than refutes my point). The same is doubly true of Bob Seger, not to mention all the big middle of the road guitar rock bands of the 80s – Foreigner, The Doobie Brothers, Journey etc. All of will inevitably be receiving the Balearic “edit” treatment at some point soon. Some already have: Rune Lindbaek’s edit of Toto’s “Africa” suffers only by its failure to top the cod-spiritual, touristic glamour of the original.

While Dolly Parton is both relatively respected and no stranger to dance music – of late I’ve been obsessed with house versions of her cover of “Peace Train” – the Peter Visti edit of “Jolene” has something of the same frission about it… a well-known and loved hit that nonetheless has little business being reproduced as a cosmic disco epic. My MP3 copy of Visti’s edit appears to have been ripped at 33rpm rather than (the proper) 45rpm, but sounds great in a totally new way: slow, ponderous, and melancholy, it approaches the 4X4 beat as if it were the soundtrack to an arduous quest for enlightenment. Dolly’s voice, sounding male and oddly, resonantly histrionic in the way so many 80s rock singers were inclined to, throbs with distress. The sudden new homoerotic connotations don’t hurt either.

Dolly Parton – Jolene (Peter Visti Edit)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/7375265fba4b1c/

!!!!!

I've only heard the Midlake, of this lot, and really enjoyed it. Particularly looking forward to this section.

tim f i kiss you. been looking for that reverso 68 remix for ages. the mountain of one remix is one of my favourites from last year (the "overblown avalanche of sound" may have been hard work for the creator but not this listener, it makes me teary. i know what you mean though)(ps. whisper it but i even have a soft spot for the original despite disliking damon gough's voice a bit). this whole thread is a gift btw.

Actually TBH the thing that keeps me from absolutely loving the AMO1 remix of "Promises" is that I don't know whether i'm supposed to play it at 33rpm or 45rpm, so I'm never sure if I'm actually listening to it at the right speed.

i've only ever heard it at 33 (i assume, is it slo-mo at 45?). i think it's the best thing amo1 have done.

the whole EP of "promises" remixes is really pretty great. and so is the peter visti "jolene"--i have 2 mp3s ripped at 45 and 33 each and both sound awesome in their own special way.

but tim you really should upload stuff i havent heard! i was really excited when i saw youd bumped this but i have all of those songs. sheesh.

Yeah how dare he

no "caramellas" tim? That mixed with the r68 dub of promises was gold for me during the end of last year.

Isn't much of this stuff also kinda screwed and chopped synth pop?

oh god I cannot thank you enough for the Cassie and Fantasia songs, ESPECIALLY the latter

also, have you heard the Beyond the Wizards Sleeve remix of the Real Ones' "Outlaw"? Same basic technique of just expanding on what's already there in the song (they even keep the verse-chorus-verse structure, which is rad since "Outlaw" is such a great little celebration of pop classicism anyway). Also notable (in a really good way) for being possibly the least wistful BtWS production yet.

a disco version of The Dream Academy’s “Life in a Northern Town” would also work nicely

Well, as Tim said, it's already happened with Dario G's "Sunchyme":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BY2OFztWiuY

a thread they'll speak of ages to come! amazing work here tim, can't thank you enough...

that said, no love for pilooski's edit of beggin'?!

the lex described a song as space battle techno in friday's guardian!

Stereotyp – "Keepin’ Me (Fauna Flash Remix)" -

Obsessed with this! UB-sessed! Sort of a less baroque "Don’t Let Stars Keep Us Tangled Up (Ewan’s Objects In Space remix)."

Still, it'd never occur to me to call it minimal (house) in any significant way. An interesting genre question - does the addition of soulful diva voices automatically negate the "minimal" and make the track something else, e.g. Euro house or deep house?

Ha ha Kevin I almost posted that for you on the Dixon thread, but thought it might be too stiff/euro given you liked the first 1/2 of the Dixon set more than the second. It also reminds me a lot of that Martin Buttrich remix of Tracey Thorn.

Both tunes are "minimal" insofar as they sound a bit like Kompakt or Mobilee tributes to early-to-mid nineties Basic Channel house records (see "I'm Your Brother" - billed to Round One - and especially "Find A Way" billed to Round Two).

They're mostly artier and less diva but some similar records from the last few years along these lines:

1) Rodney Hunter - Wanna Groove? (Christian Prommer Remix) - Prommer's a member of Fauna Flash
2) Sebo K ft. Prosumer - Moved
3) Hell ft. Billie Ray Martin - Je Regrette Everything (Superpitcher Remix)

But most of all (though not European or minimal), Armand Van Helden's "Conscience", one of the greatest and most undersung vocal anthems of the last ten years.

Ugh, I love that Je Regrette remix.

Dumb question, Tim, but is there any chance you might be able to pack all these songs into one convenient download spot...

the lex described a song as space battle techno in friday's guardian!

yeah it was son of raw 'a black man in space'. not very battle-y, maybe it could be playing in the cantina. one of my favourites this year so far too. pepe bradock's new one was mentioned in the same feature!

lex thieving, who'd have thunk

oh yeah and it was petridis mentioning the bradock! xp