Track-By-Track: Ghostcast #10

This is an entry in the Track-By-Track series for my mix for The Ghost - see the index.

Track-By-Track is a series that looks back at records you will have heard in my mixes, one by one in the order they were played. Who made them, and when? How did I come across them? And what do they make me feel?

I first reviewed this track on Discogs back in 2012, when I described it as “a meaty ‘Tour De France’ vs ‘Black & White’ slowjam”. Allowing for the anachronistic comparison to Bobby Konders’ Dub Poets EP (which would only be released two years after this one, in 1992), that description is still pretty spot on. But between that discogs review and now there was another discovery to be made: the meaty slowjam of ‘More, More, More’ could be come a funky fastjam if played on 45 instead of 33.

This is something I’m sure every novice DJ gets very excited about when first learning to play records. I remember us being in G’s flat in Oxford practicing mixing on her first set of decks and someone accidentally putting on Gloria Gaynor at 33 rpm instead of 45.

Slowed down, Gloria is magically transformed from a righteous disco diva into a jaded and now androgynous bar crooner, their righteousness as they scold their ex-lover now tempered by irony. “I’ve got all my life to live/I’ve got all my love to give”, they sing, the unspoken undercurrent in their tone suggesting that maybe there’s not so much life or love left after all. With the brakes on, the backing track, soaring and optimistic in the original, becomes bittersweet sleaze.

I really appreciate the affirming novelty this slowjam effect can bring for young queer disco lovers who live their lives identifying with female divas singing about men, only to now hear those same lyrics sung by a pleasingly gender non-conforming protagonist. I’m sure some people would say it doesn’t make much difference who is singing if you can still relate to the sentiment of the song, but I would guess those people didn’t spend much of their adolescence wondering where all the men singing about loving men were.

For another example: when Mark Seven plays Herbie Mann and Celi Bee’s ‘Superman’ on 33 in the sleaze-heavy final part of Salute 2: Reach Out And Touch Your Dreams, it turns a rather twee and heteronormative disco bop into a yearning chugger that speaks to any young queer dreaming of their own superhero:

Superman, you make me feel I’m the queen of the world!

So you can understand why a beginner DJ would feel like a wonderful world of possibility had opened up with just the touch of a 33/45 button. It’s not only bedroom DJs doing it either: in 1988, Boytronic were encouraged by a Belgian DJ to reissue their track ‘Bryllyant’ at the slower speed he was playing it at in clubs, while more recently some have taken this concept as far as entire parties (33RPM +8%)

[NB I don’t have a clip of slowjammed ‘Superman’ so if you want to hear it - which you should - you’ll just have to track down the mix, or wait till I’m back from holiday]

Then of course there’s the fastjam: speeding something up from 33 to 45.

In purely musical terms this one feels like more of a minefield. Sure, the success of a slowjam does depend on the strength of the original production and singing (if there is any), but a fastjam does not even respect these fundamentals, in almost all instances producing a thin and annoying chipmunk jingle regardless of how well produced or sung the original.

Possibly the only actual song I’ve found that stands up to this treatment is ‘Sledgehammer’ by Peter Gabriel, which becomes a sort of hyped up Michael Jackson outtake when played on 45 (ideally I’d play it on -8 just to defuse the worst of the chipmunk effect):

With non-vocal tracks there’s more leeway, though there is still the risk of annoyingly rapid-fire percussion and thinnish bass. But if you find a suitably sparse and meaty track (yes we’re slowly coming full circle) you can create some surprisingly dynamic bangers, especially if the beats are broken and the bass well mixed. Bill & Ben’s South Of The River LP is a good illustration of this: the originals are so full of space that when you fastjam them they still sound well balanced, and the slow broken dub becomes a satisfying funk. I put a fastjammed ‘Rip It Up’ towards the end of my mix for Dig Deep (57 mins), if you want an example. Others are sprinkled through my other mixes.

Which brings us back to ‘More, More, More’, the meaty slowjam that, it turns out, slaps even more on 45 (and about -6) than it does at its original speed.

The sped up bassline is elastic and funky, the snares pop, the hi-hats skitter without being too anxious, and the strings and piano, rather than needling like in most fastjams, remain in a palatable range. The only real problem is that after that cloying intro the actual track is cut from four and half minutes to only three and a half - not much time to enjoy it, nor to mix out into the next tune.

(If you want some background on my love affair with Nick Fiorucci and Michael Ova aka Hi-Bias you can read this entry from my O/B track-by-track series earlier this year.)

Hi-Bias - More, More, More (Fast Version) [Blast, 1990]

(Discogs)