The golden period of Masters At Work

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...

The Neville Brothers "Fly Like An Eagle (12" Remix/Slippin dub Fist fusion)"
Saint Etienne "Nothing Can Stop Us (Masters At Work remix/dub)"

Clive Griffin "I'll Be Waiting" re-edit

Oh dear. Pity poor Clive Griffin. Dubiously famous for a second after singing with the pair of weepy bellows that are now Celine Dion. Backing singer for, er, Take That and Kylie. Short-lived solo career that no-one remembers, except for a few 90s house and garage crackpots. Like me.

So, poor guy. On some of his record sleeves he looked more like an Elvis impersonator than a guru of garage. This may explain why he's sporting a Phantom Of The Opera look on "I'll Be Waiting". The song has become a bit of a classic over the years, perhaps less for the vocal mix than the dub, both by Morales. A rave/Hacienda/garage classic that just won't go away, a high spot in a career of low spots. iTunes just has the one album from Clive available. Although he's still singing for cheques to this day, it seems that glory will never be his.

At least we have "I'll Be Waiting" to remember him by. You can find CD rips of it on several blogs. Finest Def Mix posted it last August. Nineties Club CD Maxi Singles followed suit a fortnight later. Neither however served up the killer dub that I found on The Love Unlimited Sound System blog. I put the vocal and dub in a blender and came up with what I think is a rather pleaant Fist fusion (here), and it's a testament to the music that I can listen to it at all, as the lyrics are poor beyond belief. Garage lyrics have never given the poet laureate cold sweats, but the priceless rhyming dictionary pap that Clive serves up here just has to be read to be believed:

Believe in forever, forever more
Keep holding on to all of our dreams
You know we can find a way and we'll find it come what may
Oh hand in hand we're strong.

Starts off badly doesn't it? It gets worse. Clive has a lady singing partner for the song. She's black. You can tell. And even if you can't tell, she and Clive and going to bludgeon you over the head with THE MESSAGE:

And maybe the moon glow will soon show
All the beauty lying beneath our skin
When you touch me in the night I know there's no black and white
Nothing's gonna keep us apart.

Tolerance, love beyond the colour of one's skin, and... trying to chart as highly as possible (don't think it worked). Watch out, here comes the chorus:

I'll be waiting, 'til the end of time
Waiting for the moment to live as one
Anticipating a much brighter day
Waiting for this heartache to end.

Yep, they just rhymed 'waiting' with 'anticipating'. You can't stoop much lower than that. I'm guessing that there's a thinly-veiled allusion to apartheid in there, but what a god awful way of going about it. It's it's not about to finish quite yet...

I'll be waiting, for the sun to shine
Shining on the darkness of confusion
What we're creating, this love is yours and mine
Turning on the light in our heart.

I especially like that line, "turning on the light in our heart". It's terrible isn't it? Imagine Nelson Mandela eating slop out of a wooden bowl, in the dark, turning on the light in his heart. For 27 years. Bless.

And maybe tomorrow, the sun

Will seem a little easier to endure
(Oh I believe)
There's no place for any tear when we lose our darkest fear
Heart to heart we're strong.

That last verse is just cack. Pretty much meaningless. Pollution. Moving swiftly on...

Let's say that salvation just takes its time
Coming oh so slowly on down the line
'Cos with dream that we create and I know it won't be late
Nothing's gonna keep us apart.

Yep, forget dodgy sentence structure and scan: remember that salvation is ever so ever so slow. Indeed it would be a few more years after the record's release before apartheid was finally dismantled, no doubt partly - and inevitably - through the force of those lyrics. The song ends off with:

And maybe someday, some way
We'll find a way, can't you feel it
Won't you hold on to me (yes I will)
We'll find the strength to carry on.

Holding on? Yeah, to a sick bag. And that inspirational message of hope at the end? It's like the report on the skateboarding duck after 30 minutes of depressing news. Personally, the fact that I 'find the strength to carry on' after all that shameless bollocks amazes me. Those lyrics are - I believe - the worst ever for any garage song in history, and that's saying something. And it's a testament to the great Morales remixes that I can wade through nonsense and still enjoy the music.

Anyway, if you want to turn on the light in your heart you can download my Clive Griffin "I'll Be Waiting (Fist fusion) here. Enjoy!

Shirley Murdock - my Frankie Knuckles re-edit

It's always great when you come across something that you didn't even know existed, and that you love instantly. Thanks to the ever-brilliant Finest Def Mix blog (although Tribute to Def Mix had posted a rip of the vinyl last year) I managed to get my hands on a CD rip of Let There Be Love by Shirley Murdock, remixed by Frankie Knuckles.

So who is Shirley Murdock? Well, after a couple of R&B hits in the 80s (such as 'As We Lay', a syrupy number about two people cheating on their partners with a night-long session of boomshakalak). As a background singer for Zapp, much of her subsequent production was produced by Rouger Troutman, and the late eighties/early nineties saw her releasing a few albums that were more remarkable for her shaggy lioness hairdo than for the music they contained.

Unfortuntely her singing career (or at least the visible part) was to take a dive after 1991's Let There Be Love, remixed by Frankie Knuckles. From the four mixes on Finest Def Mix I took the Classic 12", Banji dub and Intrumental reprise and put them together to make a mix that lasts just under 20 minutes! These early Knuckles (& Morales) mixes always had a lot going on in them, meaning that you never really lose interest. My 'Fist fusion' isn't rocket science, but I think it flows pretty nicely. You can download it here.

So what happened to Shirley ? Well, her waistline went south and she found God big time. Although she's still going and still has a great voice, I doubt she'll be singing about the joys of a one night porkfest again any time soon.

Check out the track below. Pretty damn funky, despite the fact that it's about 'The Lord'.

And don't forget to download my Shirley Murdock "Let There Be Love (Classic 12" mix / Banji dub / Instrumental reprise Fist Fusion)" here.

You give amazing head love (1991)

Can't say I'd ever heard of Phil Perry before coming across a 1991 promo CD-single of his recently on an obscure blog (turns out it had been posted on the excellent Finest Def Mix blog back last September too, but I'd missed it).

Phil seems to have spent much of his career in the shadow of other singers, doing background vocals for Roberta Flack, Patti Austen or Will Downing. On his website you can sign up for the four-day Phil Perry Fan Cruise in the Bahamas and listen to his latest album Ready For Love which include the songs Ready For Love, Melody Of Love and The Strings Of Love. His previous album was called A Mighty Love. The album before that - Pure Pleasure - featured the songs After The Love Has Gone, When It Comes To Love, Love Don't Love Nobody and (whoah! calm down boy!) Love It Love It. See a theme here? Phil loves love.

The 1991 remixes of Amazing Love were done by the stone cold classic team of David Morales, John Poppo, Eric Kupper and Terry Burrus and it seems incredible that they were not thought good enough for full proper release. The chorus go "You give amazing love, no-one does it better and that's the truth. You give amazing love. Seems I just go crazy for your amazing love", and for some reason I just can't help replacing "love" with "head" every time I sing it. Try it!

Call me wicked, but there's something so earnest about Phil's singing that just needs a bit of derision. Despite that, and even though the song sticks to a pretty standard formula, the voice and production really lift it. I immediately (dare I say it) loved it.

So what do I do when given several mixes of the same song that seem to end too soon? I have to tinker with them, and it proved trickier than I thought. Firstly, the mastering is slightly different on the two mixes, meaning that I had to do some subtle filtering in parts to hide the crossover between the two. I extended the rhythm intro (far too short) on the Club mix, used the acapella from the Serious Moonlight mix for extra drama at the beginning and tagged an instrumental part of the latter to extend the former and make a satisfying 8'30" mix.

I could have added even more from the Jazzy Instrumental, but often a good mix isn't just about the length, it's about keeping the energy going, keeping it concise, keeping things interesting. Hopefully my re-edit does all those. I took great pleasure doing it, and I hope you'll like it.

You can have a listen below - and as the track is no longer available to buy (surprise surprise), it's a free download! Enjoy.

More MAW, more me

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.

The 49ers and Masters At Work get a Fist fusion: link repaired and edit improved!

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.

Heartbreaking house track gets the Fist fusion treatment

Back in 1997, the whole Mongoloids house sound was big on both sides of the Atlantic, with regular exchanges between Basement Jaxx and the big New York names of the time. Looking back, I'm not sure who was emulating who (Sanchez copying Basement Jaxx copying Van Helden and Masters At Work...).

Corrina Joseph was one of the early signings on BJ's Atlantic Jaxx label back in 1997 when the Brixton parties were blowing up and they still had their underground cred. For me that time is long gone, but for a few years the Jaxx boys produced a string of class tracks (and did some cracking remixes) and Corrina Joseph was their muse. Then, after a couple of singles, she disappeared. There were a few dodgy rent-a-voice sightings (notably for Kamasutra in Italy) but for all intents and purposes she had gone.

So where did she go? Well, looking at her myspace page it would seem she took some time off from singing in order to have children and enjoy life. Good for her!

Though her glory days may be behind her, her classics tracks on Atlantic Jaxx never get old. Like Lonely, with the haunting melody of the main mix perfectly counterpointing the dark ambience and (typical Basement Jaxx) studio trickery of the dub. Obviously, somebody had to splice them together, and that somebody is me.

Download 12 achingly beautiful minutes of vintage vocals and classic Basement Jaxx here:

Corrina Joseph - Lonely (Original mix / Fallin' dub - Fist fusion) (mediafire)