mercredi 10 février 2010

Ultra Naté - Party Girl (1995)

Just a couple of years before the abominable 'Free' - probably the song that single-handedly made crap garage popular - Ultra Naté was still making great records. This one was part of the soundtrack for indy film Party Girl starring Parker Posey, the story of a clubber who becomes a librarian to prove to her aunt that you can dance all night and still master the Dewey Decimal System by day.

I don't think the film was a great success; it's not even available on DVD outside of the USA, although there was a spinoff TV series apparently. Funnily enough, the director, Daisy Von Scherler Mayer (I'm not making this up) recently directed an episode of my favourite series Mad Men. Take a look at the trailer...



Lord knows what goes on in the film that is forbidden for under-17s. Anyway, you can hear the Ultra Naté track in the background near the end, and the Satoshi Tomiie mixes that I've tinkered with mix old school piano-driven garage with hard house elements very cleverly. It's almost a little too hard for me at times, but I think the track has stood the test of time, and the slightly hysterical elements reflect the theme of the film pretty well.

I took the vocal mix and the dub to make a 16-minute track that starts hard, goes vocal, then goes hard again. Tomiie isn't afraid of an old school breakdown, although back in 1995 I suppose it was just 'a breakdown'. Check out my version below.



You can download Ultra Naté -
Party Girl (Satoshi Tomiie Interpretation/Hardshell Fist fusion) (32MB) by clicking the download arrow on the player above.

mercredi 3 février 2010

Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam - Let The Beat Hit 'Em (1991)

 

This has to be one of the greatest club tracks of all time, with Clivilles & Cole at their zenith, showing how effortlessly they could deal with funky rhythms or house tracks with equal genius. The production's tight, the ideas in abundance, the beats... irresistible.

Both Lisa Lisa and Clivilles & Cole were from a freestyle background. Emerging from hip-hop, freestyle would soon turn into electro and house, and being on the cusp of those worlds in a time of change certainly produced some memorable music.

Clivilles & Cole liked to do long mixes (cool!) and lots of them (extra cool!). I hadn't listened to the house mixes for quite a while, but going back to them was a pleasure, especially as there were three mixes all with different elements that I could combine into one. It's a track that knows how to take its time and always throw something new into the mix (and at 13'20", that's probably a good thing). Have a listen:



If the house mixes weren't too hard to combine, the funky mix was more or less perfect, but I couldn't resist extending it just a tiny bit too. Hard to believe that this track will soon be 20 years old. Yikes!


So here are my two mixes of Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam - 
Let The Beat Hit 'Em for you to download.


The house mix (L L With Love R C / Club-Dub / Paradise Garage Club mix Fist fusion) can be found here (25MB)

and the funky mix (The Brand New Super Pumped-Up C&C Vocal Club mix Fist retouch) is here (12MB).