10 tracks to go further into Todd Edwards - Part one
New Jersey garage experimentalist Todd Edwards is best known to the world as a Daft Punk collaborator, having worked with the French duo on two songs: Face to Face, from Discovery, and Fragments of Time, from Random Access Memories. Were there any musical justice in the world, however, Daft Punk would be best known for having worked with Todd Edwards. And I’ve written a damn book about Daft Punk.
Yes, that’s how much I love Todd Edwards, a shy and rather retiring producer from Bloomfield, New Jersey, known to UK Garage fans as “Todd The God” for his wildly influential cut-up sample style and outrageously swinging drums. I would put him in my top five dance music producers and his records have given me thousands of hours of delight since I first heard his music in 1995, when his famed remix of St Germain’s Alabama Blues was released.
Edwards isn’t exactly unknown - Grammy-winning Gods can’t really make that claim. But I don’t think he is as anywhere near as well known as he should be. Which gave me a slight indecision as to how to cover him on this newsletter: I didn’t want to go back over the same old songs I have written about before but I certainly couldn’t ignore Todd’s work.
It was the strength of Todd’s catalogue that set me on the way. The man has hundreds of dazzling solo tracks, artist albums, compilations and remixes across a recorded catalogue that stretches back to 1992. So why not highlight some of the hidden gems, of which there are multitude?
10 tracks to go further into Todd Edwards, then, when I haven’t even given you the basics. So, there are no obvious Todd Edwards hits and that means no Push The Love, no Sweet Jesus, no Show Me A Sign, no Shut The Door, no Alabama Blues, no Face to Face, no Fragments of Time, no Sound Of One, no Saved My Life, no Guide My Soul.
These are all God-tier: go and listen to them. Instead, we have 10 tracks that are equally as good, if maybe a little less known, with a particular emphasis on remixes. Enjoy.
Mantra feat. Lydia Rhodes - Away (Todd Edwards mix)
Given that Daft Punk included this song on their 1999 Essential Selection, Edwards’ remix of Jack Bobrowsky’s 1997 US garage tune is perhaps not the most obscure selection on this list. Junior Vasquez also produced an absolutely pounding remix of Away that screams New York late nights under the dazzling strobes, while bad behaviour happens all around.
But I’ve included it anyway, simply because Edwards’ remix is one of the most warm-hearted house tunes I have ever heard, the kind of eyelid-fluttering tune that would welcome you in from a cold night with a cup of cocoa and a place by the fire. Maybe that makes it sound tame; but Edwards’ mix of Away is ferociously danceable under its sweet exterior, with its frantic disco strings and the best vocal cut up on a remix since MK’s Nightcrawlers Dub of Doom, creating an alternative vocal line that is as sing-alongable as it is impenetrable in meaning.
2) The Songstress - See Line Woman (Todd Edwards vocal mix)
The Songstress was a short-lived collaboration between New York producers Kerri Chandler and Jerome Sydenham; See Line Woman is a tune that had its origins in a child’s song, recorded by Herbert Halpert in Byhalia, Mississippi in 1939, then covered by Nina Simone on her 1964 album Broadway-Blues-Ballads. The Songstress’ take on the song, released in 1997, pulses with a gentle percussive power, but Todd Edwards’ vocal mix takes it into the next orbit, with a delightfully crunchy beat and a vocal that artfully combines lengthy strands of the original song with an ingenious cut-up that gives the song a whole new chorus.
Intriguingly, this was happening at a time when Edwards’ productions were starting to influence the nascent UK Garage scene. In 1996 Edwards mixed the Locked On Inside The Mix album for London label Locked On, which would go on to become one of the pillars in UK Garage; and in 1998 Locked On re-released See Line Woman with Edwards’ remix to the fore, alongside a Full Intention remix that sampled Edwards’ remix, bringing its clever cut ups firmly into the spotlight.
3) Sunshine Brothers - Thank You
I don’t think Todd Edwards has ever explained his decision to launch the Sunshine Brothers nom de plume in 1998. My guess, though, is that it was a name intended for work that was oriented towards the UK market, where UKG was slowly building its forces. Certainly, the first Sunshine Brothers record was a joint release with MC Ward, which is another Edwards’ pseudonym but one that sounds suspiciously like it has the UK on its mind.
What’s more Thank You - as far as I can tell only available on Edwards’ 1998 UKG-friendly mix album Tales From The Underground Part 1 - is one of the very few Todd tracks where he uses a 2-step beat, coming hot on the heels of the re-release of Kelly G’s insanely influential Bump-N-Go Mix of Tina Moore’s Never Gonna Let You Go, the record that invented 2-step. And he sounds fabulous with it: Thank You is a model of minimalism for Todd, with only a few elements to the production, rather than his typical sample orchestra; but he manages to make the song sound catchier than herpes. A fascinating road less travelled for the Jersey producer.
4) I Hear Him
In the 2000s the three Full On compilation albums were big news to Todd Edwards fans like me who adored the producer but didn’t have the money or wherewithal to track down every vinyl release. 2001’s Volume 1 had a lot of the big-hitting Todd tracks, including Push The Love, Show Me A Sign and Sweet Jesus. Volume 2, released two years later, had a few big songs but, for me, the real highlight was the song that started off the album: I Hear Him, which would soon become one of my favourite Edwards songs.
I Hear Him is also a brilliant example of several of the things Todd Edwards does best. For a start, it’s a really strange song. I Hear Him may lather along at a military pace but the samples are cut up into a weirdly bendy patchwork, which sounds like house music live warping in front of a hot fire. It also has a stunning key change. And as if that wasn’t enough, the song contains one of those subliminal vocal messages that Todd likes to insert into his productions, in this case the disparate samples spelling out “sent / to / guide / me / were / sent / to / guide / me” in a way that is totally distinct and yet utterly deniable. All that and my favourite ever Kate Bush sample in dance music (sorry Utah Saints).
5) Winter Behaviour 2004 (Dub mix)
Todd Edwards often returns to his own tracks, producing new versions, dubs or remixes in the later years that transform them into dazzling new works. Such was the way with Winter Behaviour, first released in 1994 on the i Records compilation Second Avenue Project EP. The same song then re-appeared on Edwards’ first artist album Prima Edizione, which was released in 1999; and he re-worked it in 2004 as a main version and a dub mix.
This is the version I have included here largely because it offers an insight into the wintery melancholy that is at the heart of some of the best Todd Edwards productions. Winter Behaviour 2004 sounds like getting your heart broken on an icy street corner in mid January, the melody that Edwards summons up through his microsamples almost classical in feel. A human heart beats strong in one of house music’s most elegant songs.
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That brings us to the end of part one of 10 tracks to go further into Todd Edwards. I hope you have enjoyed it. There will be five more tracks featured next week, so why not subscribe to get it straight to your inbox?
PPS What are your favourite underrated Todd Edwards tunes?
Some listening
House Gospel Choir - Shall Not Be Moved
House Gospel Choir mentioned in my interview with them that they have worked with Todd Edwards, a combination that has got me salivating lakes. Until that is released, though, we have Shall Not Be Moved, from the group’s excellent second album Love Is The Message, which wasn’t produced by Todd but sounds like it could have been with its sharply swung beat and wandering bass line, to which the group add their peerless vocals, creating a perfect précis of why the group’s combination of house + choir + sprinklings of UKG works so incredibly well.
14 years after making his recorded debut, Midland will release his first album later this year. He launched the news with Never Enough, a capricious, late-night electro number that reminds me, in mood mainly but also in sound, of Todd Edwards’ astounding 2006 album Odyssey. Am I obsessed? Perhaps. But if Midland hasn’t heard Odyssey - a favourite album of Burial, no less - then he really should.
Conducta, who has been one of the most important figures in the ongoing UK Garage revival, switches up his sound on Needed U, which combines the Casio bounce of classic 80s electro with a pointed, desolate vocal that recalls Burial’s more forlorn moments. It’s an unlikely mix but it works superbly.
Nala Sinephro’s new album Endlessness is a delectable, delicious work that it feels like you should be able to lose yourself inside. But what I really enjoy about it are the moments of slight musical tension, which ensure you can’t quite turn off your mind, relax and float downstream. On opener Continuum 1, for example, Morgan Simpson’s drums tug at the edges of the song’s laidback groove, edging into rhythms that feel almost at odds with the rest of the music, as if Simpson is teasing the listener’s expectations of chill-out jazz. It is a masterful display that makes for a far more interesting album, one that suggests a daring hand on the musical tiller.
Moving, by London vocalist, DJ and producer Ell Murphy, is the kind of track that Junior Vasquez would have hammered at his Sound Factory residency in the 90s: insistent, percussive, soulful and tough, cleverly using layers of vocals and very little else - because, frankly, what else do you need? Let’s get Murk in for a remix.
Let’s be honest: any new song from Juan Atkins under his Cybotron alias is going to get a thumbs up from me just for existing, much as I will eat pretty much any type of grape, simply for the fact that they are grapes and they are delicious. But Parallel Shift, the title track of a new EP that is coming in November on Tresor, has a lot more to its name than mere existence, sporting a delightful sub-bass sweep that remind you how influenced a lot of jungle producers were by Detroit techno and a simple, yet effective synth line that sounds like a warning sent deep from the stars.
Things I’ve done
Line Noise - With House Gospel Choir
For this week’s Line Noise, I was very happy to speak to House Gospel Choir, a group who combine the gorgeous vocal skills of a choir with the best house and garage beats - i.e. right up my street. We spoke before their Barcelona gig, which was stunning. We talked about the best vocalists in house, the crossover between church and club, working with Todd Terry and so much more.
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.