Don Quijote X BeatRehab

For the last couple of days, I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea behind trends. What exactly are they, and what power do they have over both our quotidian and transcendental experiences. Clearly a hard question to answer in an electronic music website post, but hey, we do after all rely heavily on trends to reach out to people, the sole foundation of this website is dedicated to trends, specifically the remixing trend. So for the music history lesson of the day here’s a little wiki segment about THE REMIX: Modern remixing had its roots in the dance hall culture of late-1960s/early-1970s  Jamaica . The fluid evolution of music that encompassed  ska ,  rocksteady , reggae  and  dub  was embraced by local music mixers who deconstructed and rebuilt  tracks  to suit the tastes of their audience. Producers and engineers like Ruddy Redwood,  King Tubby  and  Lee "Scratch" Perry  popularized stripped-down  instrumental  m...

My heart skips a beat every time a see a new French Kiwi Juice (FKJ) remix. The producer out of Paris is currently my favorite remix artist, up there with cln. shocking I know, and this remix is yet another affirmation of my undying love. I can't think of a single thing that I dislike about this remix, or indeed about the original from which it was created. June Marieezy is a silky smooth R&B/Spoken-word artist whose tracks are understated in their beauty. "Fly" is not a complex song, opting to use only 4 elements for the duration of the 4 minute track: vocal, synth, percussion, and supporting vocals. Believe it or not, the percussion and vocal don't really change at all from start to finish. The synth uses only 3 different chord progressions at varying points through the track, exemplifying the simplicity of June's approach. So why would an artist choose to do so little with 4 minutes of music? The answer is simple: it allows for the vocal (particularly the ...

We've got a weird one here folks. With this track, Snakehips remixed  their own  song and produced two structurally different, but equally awesome pieces. The original is a sumptuous piece that feels like riding a velvet highway: complete with a couple of smooth moving synth lines and not to mention the smokey lead vocal. The beat is reserved and subordinate, allowing the synth and the vocal to really take the front. The remix may not, at first glance, seem that different. But there are some subtle changes that give the track a different feel. They still allow the vocal to stay front and center (doing anything else would be a fucking travesty), but they up the beat and suppress the original synth line. They also almost "hip-hop" the track up. The bass beat hits really hard as the song progresses and fits well with the swung rhythm in the synth, that gives it that hip hop feel that the original doesn't quite have. The chorus of the remix is what hooked me, personally. ...