Ich weiß, was ich letzten Sommer getan habe
Sometime last year I asked Levin Strehlow if he could imagine me remixing him. I had already played a few concerts with him, plus rescued his release show by spontaneously doing the sound for him. All enough reason for me to have a go at one of his songs.
I finally picked Que Pasa – a song with a bluesy touch and raw charmes, while being funny at the same time. A song about his former flatmate, about her confused thinking and acting, when you could only shake your head about her – Was ist bloß los mit ihr?
Bigger Beats
Since the 90s I have a special knack for electronic music, in particular for the fantastic meltdown of funk, soul, hip hop and rock with breakbeats, called Big Beat back then. It had its peak in 1997/1998, with foremost British artists like The Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim, The Prodigy and Apollo 440. Almost any TV ad or trailer incorporated samples and broken beats. There are still artists making classic Big Beat, but a lot more expanding on the original genre and refining their sound with more modern elements and influences. A somewhat harder breed is Ghetto Funk, also very popular with the Brits, and to some extend Nu School Breaks.
With Levin’s song, I kind of fell in love with the idea of creating a very much danceable, life-affirming and very lively remix (better: rework), which still lets the original structure and song shine through. At the same time I aimed to portrait my very own interpretation of the song and to not be too serious towards the original („Kalt, warm, Schnitzel“, i.e. „Cold, warm, Schnitzel“). I am a lot less funky and less „cool“ with my own song, which are often based on a song format, I could finally live my long-lasting love for broken beats.
Back to (Nu) Skool
I wouldn’t deny my influence from the aforementioned genres when working on the Rework. Quite the contrary, I consciously studied the genre(s) and incorporated typical elements like white-noise based risers, a wobble bass (both typical for Ghetto Funk), orchestral samples and funk riffs, hanging them above a multi-faceted breakbeat. Merely I passed on the typical 202 acid synths this time, even though they even sometimes show up in my own songs (e.g. „Follow The Green Light“ from my EP I really, really like the light).
I’m a YouTube b*tch
What I finally created is one of my best-formed production works to date which I am quite proud of. Despite my studies I did not intend to just copy the genres, and thus also used elements from Reggae and Dubstep, and, for the first time, used „real“ samples. The orchestral elements are sampled from a song by Eddie Condon named „I’m gonna stomp, Mr Henry“, picked from a collection of gramophone recordings that have been painstakingly digitised and stored at archive.org. You’ll hear and see about some details of my remix’ building blocks at my „Into The Song Vol. I“ on YouTube.
And since motionless, I-kind-of-want-to-publish-the-song-on-YouTube-as-well-but-have-no-video videos are dull, I just recorded a music video for the Rework. For that it’s not as boring to listen to.