I can't believe I haven't posted this one before actually. It was one of my early edits, and is still one of my favourite tunes (after 18 years. Eighteen years!)
Tia Carrere is best known for her role in the two Wayne's World films, and it's probably thanks to them (and her shapely figure that many an adolescent has apparently fantasized about) that she got her album deal with Reprise Records.
I Wanna Come Home With You was the too-saucy-for-radio b-side to State of Grace, which may explain why some bright spark product manager at Warner decided to have it remixed by Masters At Work, to get some club play if nothing else. Firing on all cylinders, and in classic Kenlou style, Louie and Kenny turned in one downtempo mix, a house vocal and two great dubs.
With its repeated "I wanna cum, I wanna cum" chorus, the song - penned by 80s master songwriters Climie & Fisher - deliberately played up to Carrere's slightly slutty image; the Sex Dub had her moanin' and groanin' like mad, so much so that it was not deemed too risqué ro be included on the CD-single.
In fact, it looks like the CD is pretty rare now. It wasn't even on Discogs (I've created the entry now, a long and exhausting process. I love Discogs but it wish it were simpler to use). The Masters At Work mixes are brilliantly crafted, and I couldn't resist putting the dub and 12" version together to make one rather epic 17-minute version. Hope you like it.
As usual, there is no legal way to buy the track now, yet another example of music made unavailable by a major for nearly two decades. Listen and/or download below.
Salsoul may have been an excellent disco label, but as soon as the genre’s incredible popularity died out, Salsoul suffered accordingly. The remix collections brought out in the early nineties were an obvious late attempt to milk the catalogue to the max (work subsequently continued by Suss'd), but luckily the material was rich - often with great orchestration and live percussion - and the choice of remixers was inspired. People like Masters At Work, Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley, Clivilles & Cole and David Morales did exceptional work on tracks that they very obviously loved. Some mixes arguably outdid the originals.
Inexplicably named Tabasko for the UK market (it was 'Synergy' in the US), the remix album started off with Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley’s terrific mix of Loleatta Holloway’s “Mama Don’t, Papa Won’t”, a radically different take that nevertheless made great use of the original strings section and fit the song perfectly, giving it a whole new lease of life.
As well as being included on the compilation CDs, some tracks were released on CD-single, albeit in a rather roughshod manner; there was no front sleeve, artwork was uniformly terrible, tracklistings were often absent or didn’t reflect the actual contents of the CD…
Although I already had the Salsoul CD singles of some other tracks, I didn’t know that “MD,PW” had also been released as a single until I came across it on eBay. Apparently, despite these CDs being pretty hard to find when they were released, nobody else cares, as I was the only person to bid, and got the CD for next to nothing.
Anyway, the CD-single contained a Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley dub that I hadn’t heard before, and although it’s not radically different (as was often the case with his work), there were some sections that strayed from the vocal version, and I’d always wanted his mix to be longer, so… I decided to make my own version! The result gives the track more emphasis on the less vocal side and makes for a welcome surprise for anyone - like me - who knows it by heart now. I think of it as a slight extension, and the new splices sound natural, so I’m quite pleased with it. Have a listen below, and download it if you like…
I’d love to be able to direct you to a legal download site that allows you to get your hands on the Hurley remix and support the artist, but once again it’s unavailable on all the usual sites (unless you know otherwise). Sad.
It's also amusing to note that more time has now passed between the remix release and the present day than between the original disco release and the remix!
BONUS! I combined two of the MAW mixes of “Ten Percent” together to make an extra long mix too. Not rocket science, but I like the way it works. You can download that here.
So let's finish off the Freedom Williams story. If his previous single "Voice of Freedom" had got to no. 4 in the club charts, it only reached no. 74 in the Billboard charts, decidedly short of the success C&C had seen. The follow-up single, "Groove Your Mind" (a terrible name for a song, to be sure), showed that Freedom's career was nosediving fast, reaching only no. 33 on the club charts, a very poor show indeed.
Strangely though, it's not a bad track, although once again very obviously a Masters At Work production with a bit of silly rap attached. This time, Freedom's impressive flow - often so fast that you can't even make out what he's saying, not necessarily a bad thing - comes from the fact that the original was at a standard rap tempo and pitched to become a house track. This time though there's no Michael Watford, no India, and the song's definitely less catchy for a mainstream audience.
Nevertheless, Masters at Work came up trumps again, with three sterling mixes, and because of its lesser success, the song is much less well known than "Voice of Freedom". I decided to put the vocal and the dub together (even if the latter is more or less an instrumental of the former) and add on another dub at the end. Although then elements are basically the same, there's always something to keep your interest, and the fact that Freedom's rap only lasts a few minutes (out of the 19 minutes of my mix) is a bonus. Have a listen:
Once again, the track isn't available any more, so I don't feel bad about putting it up here, and although Freedom is still doing the rounds (with dodgy dance tracks), "Groove Your Mind" was his last decent single. The accompanying album in 1993 bombed. Big time. With a career essentially lasting just less than five years, from Nu Groove to C&C, his was a stellar rise and fall. As the man himself says, "being famous is easy, being a star... is a bitch". At least he doesn't have that to worry about any more.
Freedom Williams (Frederick Brandon Williams) was of course Clivilles & Cole's rapper for the C&C Music Project, plus a few remixes (like their epic Grace Jones remix). The three started collaborating in late 1980s with Seduction and The Crew on Vendetta. His combination is gruff monosyllabic rapping and bulging torso made him simple to listen to and great video fodder. In an era when MTV was still developing, that was important.
However, after C&C had had their moment in the limelight, it would seem that the happy threesome fell out. Or perhaps it was their falling out that helped bring C&C to an end? Either way, Clivilles doesn't seem pleased that Freedom continued touring under the C&C name, calling it "part of the biggest insult in the world". Yep, the biggest insult IN THE WORLD. Shocking.
Frankly, I would really really like to know whose bright idea it was to launch Freedom's solo career by pairing him up with Masters At Work. Williams' raps were always more rhyming dictionary than poetry, and Masters At Work had a profile that was voluntarily much more underground than Clivilles and Cole. I suspect that after years of successful pop-dance hits, he was in search of some real credibility with the house crowd. What a terrible idea.
Back in the day, I bought Voice of Freedom on 12" for 99p, a frequent record company ploy to get artists into the charts. The vinyl sleeve was a much more sparse, graphic affair than the CD packshot with lots of Freedom flesh and Freedom muscle, so as not to frighten the club kids. Both sleeves sport the XXXX symbol (check Free's pendant), but I'd be amazed if anyone really knew what it was supposed to mean.
And who would have believed that this oddball project was to to yield one of the best Masters At Work tracks ever? Michael Watford and India on backing vocals, a bit of Martin Luther King, and four very different mixes with Masters At Work making a very obvious effort, with careful programming, beautifully crafted effects and a simple, catchy melody.
Unfortunately Freedom himself seems a little burnt out and in need of inspiration, setting down a blunt and lazy C&C-style rap over a refined NY house track. Examples:
"Wall to wall the price is high, you might meet the type of guy or type of girl who'll rock your world and trade their diamonds for their pearls, leave you standing in a daze, kicking up their sexy ways, you might have to paraphrase, what you call the better days". If anyone has any idea what that's suppose to mean, then they have my respect. But it gets better:
"All in all there is no clue, if the sex is good take two, sometimes I don't know what to do, I might explode all over you, all over you, all over you...". Seemingly saucy, but ultimately meaningless.
Freedom does have a bit of an obsession with sex though. How about this for a chat up line? "Touch me where the sun don't shine. Will you be my concubine?" Guaranteed to get your face slapped in any club.
And the positively worst part is this triple whammy of awful cliché, simplistic rhyme and just plain nonsense: "Yes I've got to have your love, you've been sent from up above, you're the one I'm thinking of, if you push me can I shove?"IT'S JUST FRACKIN' TERRIBLE.
So how does he get away with it all? Well luckily, Freedom's very sure of himself, not afraid to put on a Jamaican accent at one point (one of my pet hates) and spout some nonsense about Ramses (perhaps he has some sort of pyramid fixation).
Nevertheless, the track really is so good that it can still be enjoyed it for what it is: a classic piece of house. All four mixes have great stuff in them, and I had a lot of fun putting them together, starting with the Chant mix, leading into the Bass Hit dub (with lots of Michael Watford) which then flows into the main mix which then leads into the amazing Jazzy mix. I also extended a few sections that I thought deserved to be longer. All very very danceable stuff (but sadly not a hit for Freedom). My fusion was a little tricky to do, but it flows really well and the result is nearly 21 minutes of classic Masters At Work, plus a few minutes of silly Freedom Williams. Have a listen, and click the download button if you'd like to keep a copy for yourself because - surprise surprise - Sony isn't in a rush to make it available digitally.
P.S. This was not the last time Freedom Williams and Masters At Work were to collaborate and produce - against all odds - some great music. More on that very soon...
1992 - 1994 were really classic years for me. New York house was at its prime: MAW, Sanchez, Morales, MK, Johnny Vicious, Vasquez, Tomiie... It was a really stimulating time.
Masters At Work's roots in Latino and house gave rise to a few interesting collaborations with Tito Puente at the time, culminating with his contribution to the Nuyorican Soul project, but even before then the MAW boys were taking Puente tracks and housing them up for the club kids, such as Para Los Rumberos for the Mambo Kings soundtrack.
It was a great track that only saw single release on 12", but the Masters At Work Forever blog (during its short life of 9 months) made the Kenlou mix available for download, and I decided to fuse it with the dub available on the first BBE compilation of MAW tracks. The result is nearly 11 minutes of classic Latin house, great percussion (obviously) and added vocals from India. Hard to complain about really.
I cleaned up the vinyl rip, tweaked the sound a little to make the two tracks flow into each others as seamlessly as possible and repeated a bar or two that I especially liked. There's definitely enough going on to keep your interest for 10'45". Have a listen...
And once again, the track's an example of how house music of the time has been orphaned by major labels; released as a club tool to boost the film nearly twenty years ago, no-one has got round to having it released digitally, and the Kenlou mix is - as such - only available on blogs. Proof that major labels are generally just short-sighted money-making machines with no interest in the quality of their back catalogue at all.
You can download Tito Puente - Para Los Rumberos (Kenlou/Puente's Vibe mix Fist fusion)
by pressing the download button on the player above (16MB).
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
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.
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).
I won't go on about how terrible, irredeemably awful her current product is (I wouldn't even call it music any more) but suffice to say that some people should - at some point - realise that they've said all they had to say, don't need any more money, and just retire.
Unfortunately, this increasingly-crusty old bag is still going strong. I prefer to ignore the adoptions, divorces and facelifts and focus myself on 1992 and this amazing release. The Masters At Work mix of Erotica was a thing of beauty, deceptively simple (based on three repeating chords) that added element upon element, building higher and higher... and then stopping abruptly. I always thought that the main MAW mix was way too short. Luckily, I recently came across the vinyl dubs on someone's blog (no idea where now) and thought it was time to give this version the length it deserves.
The House Instrumental is indeed the perfect counterpart to the Underground Club mix, with plenty of FX and dubbiness to keep the interest going. Put together, they give a 9'25" version that is - to me - much more satisfying, (dare I say it) length-wise. Brings back memories indeed.
You can download my
Underground Club mix / House Instrumental Fist fusion
It's funny how time can change things. I used to love Ultra Naté, then she did Free, had a huge hit worldwide and - in my opinion - ruined Strictly Rhythm forever, if not house music in general. After Free, every label started scrambling to make the catchiest, most commercial house tune possible. Things were never the same.
I bought this CD-single on import when it came out, and it reminds me of the good old days of scouring HMV for U.S. maxi-CDs with loads of mixes on them. This one had over an hour of music on it, with barely anything to throw away. The downtempo mixes are cool, the Fire Island mix went on to be the basis of Ultraflava (hence the name), and with names such as Basement Boys, Nellee Hooper and Mood II Swing how could it not be a classic?
It was the last three mixes on the CD, collaborations between Mood II Swing and Little Louie Vega that really piqued my interest though. A mixture of dubby and druggy, they worked the vocal elements and transformed the song into a Factory Bar classic. Epic, inspired stuff. I had a bit of fun putting those three mixes together into one long mix (23'14"!) and although it's not perfect (it was one of my first ever efforts) it's still pretty tasty. Things were complicated by one of the mixes not being at the same tempo as the others. Anyway, have a quick listen if you like...
When my bag was stolen from a train years ago, this CD was in it. I was so relieved to find a copy again a little later, and if you can, you should too. It's pretty scarce now ($30 on eBay!).
I only very vaguely registered Eighth Wonder at the end of the eighties for this - their only decent hit, penned by the then blazing Pet Shop Boys, before they went utterly rancid.
What I only just found out however is that the track was remixed for the American market by a certain... Little Louie Vega, pre-Masters At Work and still very much in Freestyle mode. I knew that Vega had been very active on the New York freestyle scene, and yet it has only just struck me that freestyle's position as part way between house and hip hop was the perfect preparation for the Kenlou mixes that were to follow a few years later, with both club and jeep beats handled with precision and intelligence.
Although a shortened version of Vega's main mix of I'm Not Scared was released on CD, the full mix (and dub) were only available on 12" promo. I'm not really up for paying a lot to find a copy, but I did manage to find half-decent rips of both mixes that allowed me to whip up a quick fusion. And here it is.
And if anyone has a good rip of the full, 7'17" vocal mix, I'd love to have it.
You can download Eighth Wonder - I'm Not Scared (Little Louie Vega mix/dub Fist fusion) here (11MB)
Give It To You and Carry On. I thought I'd heard these tracks soooo many times that it would be impossible for me to get any more pleasure out of them. I pretty much played the US CD-singles to death back in the day, and yet it's been a while... so I dug them out again, and hearing them anew was actually pretty darn great.
With mixes by Masters At Work, Kerri Chandler, Maurice Joshua, Todd Terry and David Morales perhaps that's no surprise.
My Fist fusions aren't brain surgery, but the first for Carry On does allow you to listen to the Masters At Work mix and dub in one long stretch lasting 11'23". The crossover point is pretty flagrant because the two mixes are radically different, but I think it works.
The fusion of two David Morales mixes of Give It To You is much more satisfactory/successful, clocking in at 12'12".
I always wondered where the CD cover art for this one came from, and now I know: there was actually a video for this version, very obviously pitched at the 'club' (i.e. gay) crowd, with numerous muscled men in white underwear venerating an almost-static Martha Wash. You can read my snide comments over the video below, but the quality's not that good, so you may want to check out a better-quality version here too.
It's really quite hilarious, chock-a-block with clichés and gives a whole new meaning to the lyrics "I'm gonna give it to you".
For info, Martha Wash will be 60 in a few years time.
You can download my Fist fusions of Carry Onhere (24MB) and Give It To Youhere (22MB).
It's hard to fault the Masters At Work productions of the early nineties. The boys had loads of ideas, great technical skills and a feel for the dancefloor that just blew everyone else out of the water.
Even more surprising was their versatility, being able to handle dubs, vocals, jazz influences, jeep beats... all this through their experience as DJs and heritage as latino Americans.
The collaborations with Tito Puente were also remarkable for radical reworks that made the tracks unrecognisable whilst still keeping their trademark hooks. Personally, I would love to find Para Los Rumberos on CD (only the Puente's Vibe mix was on the first of their BBE compilations), but in the meantime I find it hard to believe that Ran Kan Kan has been overlooked on the blogs.
This of one the first tracks by MAW that I really loved, and it seems that no-one has posted the CD-single yet, although a vinyl rip was available on the Masters at Work Forever blog, now - ironically - dormant (and much missed).
So for those who like their vintage MAW in pristine quality, click here for the five mixes of Ran Kan Kan, including the absolutely storming original! (46MB .rar file).
I suspect that the release of Titiyo's album "This Is" in the 'States in 1993 was partly due to the success of her previous one, and partly because she just happens to be Neneh Cherry's baby sister.
With such a sniggersome artist name and unfortunate double-entendre single title, it's no wonder that Back & Forth didn't really make its mark in England, however it did include a couple of remixes from young upstarts Masters At Work (as did the follow-up single Tell Me I'm Not Dreaming). Both were undiscovered classics for me until a few years ago. Both show MAW at their inventive best at the beginning of the nineties (yes, again).
In Back & Forth's case, the vocal mix sounded very different from the the dub - which is basically an instrumental excursion with added sax solo - but I had the feeling that the beats at the end of the one would meld well into the instrumental beginning of the other, and I think I was right! With a little extra tweaking and sampling, they came together to make one brilliant 11-minute whole, and I especially like the surprising change of mood between the two (surprising because it seems to flow quite naturally). Have a listen if you like...
You can download Titiyo - Back & Forth (Masters At Work 12"/Horny dub Fist fusion) as an audiophile FLAC file here (72MB) or an iPod-friendly AAC file here (20MB).
Ah, 1994! That was the year. Heaps of classic garage tracks, plus Johnny Vicious and Armand Van Helden at their prime. Delicious.
This tracks was one of the first fusions I ever did, using no less than four mixes and lasting nearly 22 minutes. I like the way the mixes all had their own personality and yet flowed into each other well. Some purists might not appreciate Armand's stomping bit at the end, but I loved it then and I love it now. Reminds me of my sole visit to the Factory Bar in New York... (*sigh*)
Enjoy!
You can download my Fist Fusion of
Barbara Tucker "I Get Lifted" (42MB) here
I have to say, it took me a while to like these mixes by Masters At Work for Norwegian pop band Bel Canto, and I very much overlooked them for a while. Like, for ten years!
However time is great at helping your appreciate certain things, and I have finally come round to thinking that these mixes are actually rather fine: the MAW vocal version is pretty cool (although the vibrato in the voice makes it very clear that everything has been radically speeded up), the 'Tribe In Dub' mix is much more than just bonus beats, and even the downtempo mix (together with its instrumental version here) isn't that bad. Well worth rediscovering.
Any garage-head will know about Nu Colours. Desire was one of those songs that wore on me after a while; The Masters At Work dubs were everywhere at the time, and I just got sick of hearing it.
Then recently I bought a CD compilation on eBay (for the Horace Brown track) and found another MAW mix of Desire on it, the Style mix, clocking in at over 11 minutes long. Can't find it on any other blogs, can't find it on Discogs. Very strange indeed. Even stranger is that mix is pretty damn fine! So why didn't this very decent, full-length Masters At Work mix get released back then? And why did it seem to disappear completely? Who knows. Anyway, I'm happy to share it here for fans of the group and - especially - fans of the wonderful Masters At Work.
And here's the original video which cleverly gets around the obviously saucy nature of the song by heavily featuring a steam train (numerous shots of trains going into tunnels, coal being shovelled into the boiler engine, etc). At around 2'52" you'll see the couple that have been smooching since the beginning. The bloke points to the end of the carriage where the toilets probably are, and they both go off there looking very smiley. Desire indeed!
There were a few years in the 90s when no-one could touch the Masters At Work. Ideas, beauty, energy: they were at the top of their form. Equally at home with chugging jeep beats or clickety-skip house, the production was perfect and the music amazing.
I've done numerous re-edits of their various remixes, but here are a couple that are a little different. For "Like An Eagle" by the Neville Brothers and "Nothing Can Stop Us" by Saint Etienne I've coupled the downtempo mix with the house mix. There's an obvious transition because of the different BPM, but I think they flow quite well. Good for a change of tempo during a DJ set perhaps?
By the way, can you imagine being a product manager at Warner in New York in 1992, being handed a UK indie group like Saint Etienne and deciding that it would be a good idea to give two of their tracks to Masters At Work? Inspired or reckless, the results were classics...
Following other blogs can be a sobering experience sometimes. For quite a while I couldn't find any current music I liked. My hypemachine thread was coming up with duds. Nothing on junodownload was doing it for me.
Then I came across some amazing blogs with music from the period I love. '92, 93', '94. Places like 90s Club CD Maxi Singles (run by a guy called Mark S) and Finest Def Mix. After having already bought everything I thought I liked from that time (thanks, eBay), these tireless bloggers were coming up with endless gems, day after day after day, that I'd never heard before.
At the same time, I had been tidying up my CD collection and hoping desperately to find time to get my vinyl organised. I set some CDs aside to sell them. Checking on Discogs and eBay, I have now understood that they are almost all completely worthless. All the stuff I thought was rare turns out to be commonplace. I do not have a large, priceless collection of music. I have a huge, worthless waste of space.
Of course I'm exaggerating. Many of my CDs aren't worth euros, but they are priceless to me, and the upside is that even if the other blogs put my paltry selection into perspective, I can still bring something to the table and get pleasure from some real discoveries.
Like Meli'sa Morgan (love that apostrophe). I came across a vinyl rip of her track "Still In Love With You" on the Gotta Have House blog. It blew me away. Firstly, both the mix and dub were great, secondly they are from the golden period of Masters At Work (early nineties) and thirdly I'd never heard of them before.
There was quite a lot of noise on the mp3's, which was a shame, so I de-clicked them with ClickRepair, took out the excess empty space at the beginning and end of the tracks and re-posted them for anyone to download. Mark S saw my comment, did a bit of research and found out that - in theory - a CD-single of the MAW mixes existed. In the meantime, I has gone mad about the track, e-mailing Meli'sa's old label and leaving a message on her Myspace page (neither ever replied).
But Mark came up trumps. Finding a CD-single for sale on amazon.de, but with no tracklisting, he chanced his luck and ordered it. A few days later, he received the CD and it contained all the Masters At Work mixes in top quality. For a househead and MAW-lover like me, it was as dream come true. He very kindly posted them to me for a project I had in mind...
Like many MAW mixes of the time, the vocal and dub were different but could be combined easily into one long track. Which, of course, I couldn't resist. So here's my Fist fusion of the Meli'sa's In The House and Hard Love dub mixes by Masters At Work. Top quality sound, top quality mixes, and my humble input. Perhaps I have something to offer to music after all.
Download Meli'sa Morgan - Still In Love With You (Meli'sa's In The House mix & Hard Luv dub Fist fusion)here.
UPDATE June 2010: three of the Masters At Work mixes have turned up on iTunes here! Still hoping the dubs will come out...I guess I knew that Masters At Work (MAW) had remixed borderline-cheesy italo house group The 49ers back in 1992, but the mixes never came out on CD (never came out in Europe at all actually), and over the years I gathered that if I hadn't heard them, well, they probably weren't very good.
This week, going through my ever-longer list of retro blogs with killer mixes from the 90s, I came across a new blog - definitely for me - called MAW Forever. There's some amazing stuff on there, precisely from their most fertile period, and a little down the page was "The Message" by 49ers. I have the CD single with another great Italian mix called the Gradualswingroundub, but after downloading the MAW mixes (seven of them!) I found at least three that I thought were really great!
They did, however, need a little work. The '12" vocal' and 'Dub Two' both had to be de-clicked, but de-clicking the 'Vocal dub' took all the force out the drum line, and I ended up having to remove clicks - or as many as I could - manually in order to keep the sound quality. Then I boosted the levels of all three mixes, joined the vocal and the dub (removing some of the dub that I found a bit repeptitive, and adding and extra bass effect at one point to suit my fancy) and then joined the Dub Two onto the end.
The result is nearly fifteen minutes of non-stop classic Masters At Work, and a great song. I'm really pleased with it. The vocal dub is simple but strong, and the Dub Two changes tack while keeping continuity. This is why I love re-editing on the computer. And why I love blogs!
Click here to download my Jason Fist re-edit of The Message by The 49ers.
