10 songs to know MK - Part two
This is part two of my ode of Marc “MK” Kinchen, the Detroit house don and production innovator.
6) MK featuring Alana - Love Changes (Masters At Work - MK Dub) (1993)
This was a very tough choice. Should I go for the classic, piano-rush house of the MK Mix of Love Changes, which features one of my favourite Alana vocals, a whip-smart romantic kiss off, and one of the best pieces of drum programming you’re ever likely to hear (about 4.55 in)? Or should I opt for the moody, late-night deep house of the Masters At Work - MK Dub, where a classic MaW chord sequence, just the right side of mournful, meets MK’s cut-up wizardry? In the end, the prospect of three house music masters - Louie Vega, Kenny Dope and MK! - on one song won out. Had a bomb dropped on the studio where this gem was being put together, the history of house music would have suffered immeasurably.
7) Celine Dion - Misled (MK Re-Direct Mix) (1993)
Celine Dion can obviously sing but there’s nothing in her voice that suggests she can be a club diva, even when getting down with her new jack swing self on her 1993 single Misled.
And this is why MK’s remix job on Misled is so impressive. By this point, MK was doing a lot of remixes on the back of Push The Feeling On, charging $20k a piece. And Dion gets her money’s worth here, as MK transforms the singer’s treacle-y R&B number into a bumping house epic, riding a perfectly clipped beat, wandering bass line and - of course - an expertly cut-up vocal. This latter element provides an alternate chorus, on which Dion sounds very much like a house diva, accustomed to the dirtiest corners of New York Clubs.
Having hit upon the cut-up vocal style early on in his production career, MK knew he was onto a good thing. “I was getting asked to remix songs that I didn’t really like or songs where the melodic line wasn’t strong enough, so I basically tried to create my own hook by chopping the vocals,” he told Attack in 2013. “Any dub that I’ve done over the years, you can replace the melody with an actual lyric and it’d probably be a pretty decent song, but the ones I’ve done you can’t understand what they’re saying. Probably the first or second time I did it, I was like, Oh… This works. Then I realised, This works every single time. Even now if I’m doing a song that’s really great I still do it anyway because it makes a second hook.”
What is particularly interesting is that on Misled MK does all this without fundamentally changing the original song’s structure. His Celine Dion remix is no Aphex Twin-style destroy-and-conquer job. Instead, he teases the song’s house elements to the surface, transforming an original I don’t particularly like, by a singer whose voice has never enchanted me, into a house banger, ripe with slightly camp drama. MK is a master remixer (typically the best results coming in his dubs) and there are many, many examples I could have chosen here.
I also love the way Kinchen is so down to earth about his remixer’s art. “A lot of times I’d be given shitty songs to remix and I’d think, I can’t make this good (laughs),” MK told Juno. “The vocals are awful. So I would cut them up, use pieces and try to make them cool and at least try to give it a melody that I liked.”
And, yes, I guess the Misled remix is kind of cheesy, in many ways. But it was good enough for Todd Edwards to put on his seminal Locked On. Inside The Mix - an album I seem to be mentioning almost weekly - so it is more than good enough for me.
8) Jodeci - Freek’n You (MK dub) (1995)
And talking of Locked On…, Kinchen’s 1995 remix of Jodeci’s anthemic Freek’n You also featured on that record, which did so much to get me into the skippy, wears-its-weirdness-lightly, pre-UKG house sound of Todd Edwards, Mood II Swing and MK.
And Christ what a song! Unlike Misled, the original of Freek’n You slaps. But it is MK’s remix I would take to my grave, the drums a ceaseless whirl of tightly-coiled energy that sound like there’s a breakbeat hiding in there, when there obviously isn’t, the bass line worth the remix fee in itself and the keyboard riff Kinchen’s best since Push The Feeling On.
MK’s remix of Freek’n You, while not exactly slow, proves definitively that you don’t need to career around at 180 BPM to get 100% energy from a song, absolutely bursting with fiery house zeal at its 125 BPM canter.
9) Lana Del Rey - Blue Jeans (MK Dark Blue Dub) (2012)
In the late 90s, MK quit house music. “I wanted to be a pop producer and I couldn’t do that in the 90s being an underground house producer,” he told Juno. “So it got to the point where I felt I had to make a choice and I wasn’t influenced anymore by anything that was coming out in terms of house music.
“The sound, the scene, started to change. The club scene wasn’t the same - hip-hop was taking over - Jay Z, Puffy, those guys were becoming big, so a lot of house clubs were moving towards hip-hop. I just wasn’t into it as much and since I didn’t DJ, I was stuck in New York with Puffy (laughs). And when the remix commissions did come in, everyone just wanted something that sounded like Nightcrawlers. I was burning out, so I stopped.”
Kinchen spent the next decade in LA, becoming Will Smith’s in house producer in 2002. (It sounds like something of a bittersweet experience. “Will paid me well and I didn’t need to do anything else,” Kinchen told Juno. “He built me my own studio but Will wasn’t really doing anything that was getting released. He worked on one album and it didn’t really do anything, so I was making tracks for nothing, really”). Kinchen also worked on music for film and TV and produced for Diane Warren and Pitbull, notably co-producing the latter’s theme song for Men in Black 3.
MK didn’t come back to house until 2010 (ish - Kinchen’s memory is slightly sketchy), when Jamie Jones and Lee Foss asked him to DJ at their Miami gig and remix their summer hit Forward Motion. Perhaps the first big moment of phase two of Kinchen’s house career, however, was his 2012 remix of Lana Del Rey’s Blue Jeans, which took off in the clubs, back when Lana was still something of an unknown quality on the musical world.
Kinchen says it took him three records to get back into the house style. On his remix of Blue Jeans he sounded totally at home in a house music world that had come around to his way of thinking while he was away, via UK Garage and Disclosure, both of which bear the unmistakeable trace of the MK sound. Blue Jeans is, in fact, a classic MK remix, the beat skipping away, as it must, the keyboard riff and bass line working in perfect harmony and - glory be! - a vocal cut-up that turned Del Rey’s dramatic tales of James Dean and cancer into a perfect summer house hit.
10) Storm Queen - Look Right Through (MK Remix) (2013)
It is still something of a mystery to me how MK’s remix of Look Right Through, a 2010 single by Morgan Geist of all people, made it to number one in the UK in 2013. (No shade on Morgan Geist, a producer I love. But number one?? In the ACTUAL CHART???? Really?????). My best guess is some combination of Disclosure-led house fever - their White Noise having made number two in early 2013 - summer clubbing and the song's quirky video, featuring an eyepatch-sporting white lion in a suit.
The funny thing is, having reached number one a decade ago, Look Right Through now feels like an inevitable hit, with its incredibly hooky vocal and a nagging, two-note synth riff. But then so - to me - do Burning, Love Changes and many more of MK’s productions, which remained club hits even as dance music was swarming the UK in the early 90s. All of which is to say that MK’s remix of Look Right Through isn’t one of my favourite Kinchen productions. But, as the moment when a true house master finally got his props, it had to be on this list, a reminder that sometimes genius will bubble through to the top, even if it has to come via Will Smith, Pitbull and a man in a lion suit.
NB It is now 24 hours since I wrote this last piece and the vocal riff from Look Right Through is STILL in my head, seemingly un-flushable. That, of course, is one big reason why it was so big.
PS I have created a Spotify playlist of some of the best MK. Although - DAMN - loads of MK's best dubs aren't on Spotify. Boo! https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4eijORcBfRCUzA53smbaz4?si=185e6140f25546dc
Some listening
Shanti Celeste - Ice Cream Dream Boy
Ok, who had Shanti Celeste down to create the ultimate late summer anthem of 2024, a song that perfectly captures the happily weary, nostalgia-tinged last week of a summer holiday? Not me, I should say. But Ice Cream Dream Boy, a rave-y house number that reminds me of early Orbital, is a total joy that makes me nostalgic for last week. It also marks Celeste’s coming out as a vocalist and she equips herself brilliantly.
John Beltran - Cachaca (Kareem Ali remix)
And even more late summer feelings from Kareem Ali’s gorgeously dreamy remix of John Beltran’s Cachaça, which positively glides on its jazzy, Brazilian engine, like watching the planes make trails in an August sun. Cachaça feels perfectly weighted, which is a much underrated skill in music.
You could make an argument that all electronic music is influenced by dub - considering remixes, the role of the producer, the use of echo and other effects etc. Come what may, though, I have a weak spot for electronic music that is overly influenced by the sounds of Jamaica’s heaviest musical implosion. Ghost Dubs - aka Michael Fiedler aka Jah Schulz - has been exploring this kind of crossover for more than two decades but Damaged, the new Ghost Dubs album, is one of his finest works yet, the sound of dub being slowly rotted away at the edges. The Regulator is probably the album’s most upbeat song, slinking along at a pace that suggests you could dance to it although you almost certainly won’t. (And thanks to the reader who recommended the album BTW.)
Body Talk is the first release on DJ Flight’s recently revived Play:Musik label and it marks a stunning return. When I interviewed Flight this week, she said that the EP’s title track has been consistently lighting up dance floors and you can see why: the beat is finely cut, the chords swirl ominously and the old school vocal irresistible, as Nectax bends and tumbles it around the mix. Body Talk reminds me of classic jungle in its sharp invention without ever feeling retro, which is an impressive feat.
Things I’ve done
Here's a special summer bonus for you, from Primavera Sound 2023. Marta Salicrú and I interviewed the Mael Brothers and now I want them to adopt me. They are legends. We're not worthy.
… and then summer ended and it was back to work. And who better to welcome us back than DJ Flight one of THE leading drum & bass DJs for more than two decades, coming via legendary clubs such as Metalheadz and Swerve? We talked about that; about jungle versus drum & bass; about EQ50 and working with Nia Archives; about revivals - or not - about telepathic relationships with MCs and more. DJ Flight plays the Creekside on Saturday September 7 and you can get your tickets here.
The playlists
There are two: The newest and the bestest, with all the best new music of the last three years; and the Newest and the Bestest 2024, which is a variation on the above that you can probably work out.