Midweek Mix (24/08/22)
This week’s edition of Midweek Mixes is a special dedicated to the radio show I did with Christa Belle a couple of weeks ago on Berlin’s Refuge Worldwide.
Bubble World w/Christa Belle & Joe Delon @ Refuge Worldwide (04/08/22)
I met Christa earlier this year at a dinner in Lisbon and then we bumped into each other again in May on the dancefloor at Your Love in Panoramabar. I listened to and wrote about her Bubble World show with DJ Sprinkles and Gordo in June and at the beginning of August I was a guest myself. Christa originally suggested we talk about my label Welt Discos but, as anyone who’s spoken to me recently will know, running a vinyl label right now is not the most edifying of experiences, so I didn’t particularly want to get into it. I mulled it over for a while and then one topic jumped out: pop remixes!
I am part of a long-running Messenger group where me and three friends often hash out the ins and outs of pop remixes. Within that group, my friend Sam is the one who will obsessively listen to all the Shep Pettibone remix credits on discogs to find the good ones. Ewan will do the same but for Hex Hector (doing God’s work, really). And then Michael will usually be found making his own edit of, say, Carly Rae Jepsen but with a Mike Ink-style track underneath. Between us we have plenty of opinions on what makes a pop remix acceptable or not, and I took the opportunity of this invite from Christa to share some of those opinions live on the radio.
It’s a controversial topic, and one complicated by the rather convoluted categorisation of remixes/edits/mash-ups, the difference between major label releases and quick and dirty free downloads on soundcloud, and, I suppose, the definition of ‘pop’. So Christa and I tried to cover these various dimensions of the topic while always bringing the focus back to what it means to us as dancers and DJs when we hear or play a pop remix. That for me is the crux of the matter - does the track have a deeper meaning to me and others? And, if not, if it’s “just a bit of fun”, is that good enough?
Rather than taking you through the show here, I recommend just listening to it - and then you can enjoy the fun bonus content below this tracklist:
Tracklist
The Jacksons - Let Me Show You (David Morales Edit)
Missy Elliott - 4 My People (Basement Jaxx Remix)
Tori Amos - Professional Widow (Armand’s Star Trunk Funkin Mix)
Beck - Cellphone’s Dead (Ricardo Villalobos Entlebuch Remix)
Debbie Harry - I Can See Clearly (Murk Habana Dub)
Erasure - S.O.S. (Perimeter Mix)
Oklou - God’s Chariot (SH Remix)
Other remixes that didn’t make the cut
Here are three tracks that were on the long-list for the show but didn’t make it.
Mariah Carey - Loverboy (MJ Cole Remix)
Representative of an entire category of UKG remixes of pop tunes. Takes an absolute disaster of a single and turns it into an exemplary tune for the genre, making Mariah's vocal shine more than in the original along the way. Sometimes the source material being terrible means all remixes are de facto terrible (Cotton Eye Joe i'm looking at you!), but this is an example of someone transcending that and then some.
Robbie Williams - South Of The Border (187 Lockdown Dub)
File alongside the Murk remix as an example of producers having an existing track and doing the absolute bare minimum to present it as a ‘dub’. At least 187 Lockdown had the dignity to include some small fragments of Robbie’s voice in this one.
Paula Abdul - Crazy Cool (Bad Boy Bill House Mix)
A perfect illustration of the 90s house remix of an R&B slowjam, done in order for the single to reach the dancefloor market. In many ways this is a cheap handbag-sounding take on the sumptuous original, but for some reason I find it totally irresistible. Yet to have the guts to play it out but one day soon…
Enraged Discogs comments
In the show I included this Murk remix of ‘I Can See Clearly’ by Debbie Harry of Blondie fame, which clearly contains absolutely no traces of the original tune and must have just been a quick cash-in by Oscar and Ralph. I play this record a lot (indeed I played it early on in my Panoramabar set a couple of weeks ago) so it gave me a lot of lolz when I discovered how polarising it was among the Discogs commentariat.
First up is user nychousedj who condemns the record with a 1-star rating and the following extended burn:
What a shambles.
But wait! User drubber77 weighs in with, in my opinion, a fair comment:
You numpty.
The final word (so far) rests, however, with user studio5431, who firmly takes nychousedj’s side:
I don’t know why most DJ bios go into such detail when they could easily be condensed down to “Serious K-hole music for the drug induced and stupid”.
Remix Roundtable
The germ of an idea has been floating around in the Messenger group I referred to: a sort of panel review where each of us - and perhaps some guest contributors - give our very personal and (ideally) highly inflammatory opinions on specific pop remixes and edits. Watch this space!