jeudi 26 novembre 2009

MAW & Company ft. Xaviera Gold -
Gonna Get Back To You (1992)



If I were a drag queen, my drag queen name would be Xaviera Gold. It's just a ridiculously excellent name.

And this happens to be an outstanding title. The Ken Lou mix starts off as a fairly standard garage affair, but it is extremely well constructed and produced, and I love the hint of India on the backing vocals. It's not too hard to find on CD as it was on the Kinky Trax 2 compilation, and also Declaration of Independents that was recently featured on fairly new blog Only 320. A good percentage of stuff there is interesting, and the rips are high quality, so how can you complain?

However, it's a little more difficult to find the Mood II Swing dub from the b-side in decent quality. It's a saucy affair with Xaviera telling us that she wants a "long big dick" and that if you don't have a yacht in your jeans, you needn't bother her. Hot!

I ripped this years back and just found it again, so decided to declick and re-encode it. Quality is pretty good! And it's a classic! Have a listen...


I'm now re-listening to both mixes with a great deal of pleasure. Thanks MAW and thanks Xaviera. Gold indeed.

By the way, there's a 3rd mix on the 12" (edited by Frankie Knuckes apparently), but it doesn't really stand out, and another - rarer - mostly instrumental dub on 12" (that I found on YouTube but can't find again right now).

It would be great to see the track officially re-released. Alas, I imagine that it's stuck in major label limbo (as it originally came out through BMG).

You can download the
Ken Lou 12" and Mood II Swing "Big Thick" dub of
MAW & Company ft. Xaviera Gold - Gonna Get Back To You

dimanche 22 novembre 2009

Earth Wind & Fire - Boogie Wonderland (Total Vocal mix by Slow Supreme)


If you're a remixer, and you're remixing a major artists for a major label, here's a word of advice: don't remove the entire chorus and the part where they sing the name of the song.

Inspired fools Slow Supreme did just that when they proposed two mixes of Boogie Wonderland for a Japan-only remix album in 2002, and guess what? The one that completely omitted the title and obliterated the tune didn't get picked for the CD. In fact, I thought it had never been released, but it did in fact make it onto a 12" sampler. As far as I know, a CD rip has never been available before.

A shame really, because it's a pretty accomplished 2-step mix, much in the style of MJ Cole, and pretty catchy despite being a radical rework.

I haven't re-touched the mix at all. Just enjoy!



You can download Earth Wind & Fire - Boogie Wonderland
(Total Vocal mix by Slow Supreme)
by clicking on the little download arrow on the player.

mercredi 11 novembre 2009

Nuyorican extended


Back in 1997 I was working in the dysfunctional Black Market shop in Paris and the buzz around the release of Nuyorican Soul was immense. A frenzy. The Paris crowd worshipped Masters At Work, had in-depth knowledge of disco, jazz and latin influences (Spain is, er, not far) and the Nuyorican Soul album had them all in qualitative spades.

Add to that some killer remixes of the album's singles - including a couple from Armand Van Helden at the top of his game - and the album was absolutely essential.

Strangely enough, in a market dominated by reissues and 'platinum versions' the tenth anniversary of the release went by without any sort of celebration. Surely there's a market for a special 2CD edition with extra mixes? For a start, I'd love to find a digital copy of I Love The Nightlife that they did for the soundtrack of Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco. After all, despite being on Sony (whereas the Nuyorican album was through Universal) it was out around the same time, and has never been released on CD.



Anyway, I'd made my own long version of the album a while back, but in low quality mp3, so I decided to start over in high-quality. The tracks were all sequenced together already, but I've replaced the short versions of the singles with their extended or remixed versions and tacked another remix on the end, making the whole thing 30 minutes longer (1h44min!). I like to think of it as an extended listening session for real fans of the album.

You can download my Fist extension here 
(it's 200MB so it may take a while).


As a bonus I've done a new extension of Runaway too. At the time, the Armand Van Helden mix was getting all the attention, and only one of the Mousse T. mixes was on the CD-single in Europe. I've taken the two that were on the US CD-single and melded them into a 14-minute piece by extending the end of one and fading it into the next. Works pretty well!

Have a listen:



You can download my Runaway (Mousse T's Jazz Funk Experience / Spanish Underground mix Fist fusion)
here (27MB).