Block & Crown – Hard to Let Go
Charli XCX – Super Love (Mike Mago)
CLMD – Fader
Sultan & Ned Shepard – All These Road (Trentino)
Tai & Kay- The Thrill (Original)
Dave Spoon – At Night (Tom Staar)
Timmy Trumpet & SCNDL – Bleed
Justin Prime & Joey Dale – Poing
Disco Fries – Parachute (Original)
Cazzette – Run For Cover
Orjan Nilsen – Mafioso (Extended)
Martin Volt & Quentin Slate ft Jonny Rose – Ruins (Original)
Iversoon & Alex Daf ft Eireann Wax – State of Oblivion (van Eyden)
Zerotic – Eternal Love
Tag: mike mago
SONG OF THE DAY: Charli XCX – “Superlove”
It’s easy to see why NME named Charli XCX to their Young Brittania 2013 – Future of British Music list. Whereas most young dance pop artists are manufactured studio creations, Charli started off as an independent alternative artist, writing/cowriting her songs, and has kept that ethos firmly intact. Leading off her second solo album comes “Superlove,” an incredibly-written pop song about powerful infatuation and love with analogies that are both simple and deep. The hooks are catchy and it’s the kind of song that SHOULD be on the radio every 10 minutes. For club consumption, four remixers go in completely different directions. Its hard to describe the sound of Yeasayer as there really isn’t a steady beat (or any beat per se), but it’s not ambient and actually has a pulsing energy to it – imagine listening to ELO while in a K-hole. Frenchman Canblaster mixes electro, disco, fusion, stutter beats, and vocal effects for a kitchen sink effect that shouldn’t work- but does. Mike Mago’s mix is an extension of the retro ’90s house sound of his summer anthem “The Show.” The Wideboys mix is the most straightforward, a blending of their trademark bouncey electrosound with stadium elements for contrast. All four remixes are creative and show how a great pop song can work in just about any context.
Image Courtesy of Atlantic.
SONG OF THE DAY: Oliver – ‘Mechanical Remixes EP’
The Mechanical EP, released by Oliver back in January, featured four tracks that spanned genres yet felt cohesive because of their musical production style. While they have been on tour with Zedd and Alex Metric, remixes of the tracks were compiled for the new Mechanical Remixes EP, which is every bit as diverse and interesting as the original. Take the title track, where the original is a full-on ’80s downbeat synth-pop movie score with a touch of dubstep influences, like a modern day Harold Faltemeyer, and the remix by Values strips it down for a lo-fi and happier hands-in-the-air vibe with more of a Bow Wow Wow feel. The Dillon Francis mix of “Night Is On My Mind” flips the mood, turning the downtempo, dark-vibed moombah-ish track into a happier modern electro track which would be perfect for a revival of the ’80s movie Breakin’. Nom de Strip take the bouncy and poppy electro jam “Control” and toughen it up with a harder, more agressive electro feel, but keep the pretty keyboard breakdown intact, making it a nice contrast. The least successful of the batch seems to be Tchami’s take of “Move Your Body (MYB).” What starts as full-on ADD electro jam with new sounds coming every 20 seconds or so (stutter beats, ’90s Daft Punk vocoder, insane filters, handclaps), is simplified to a hybrid of hard electro and UK garage with a a dark dropout which seems like it was inspired by that Mike Mago track “The Show.” If you’ve not heard the original Mechanical EP, it’s definitely worth a listen. The Remixes EP takes all the tracks in a new direction but not so far removed that you can’t feel the original vibes.
Image Courtesy of Fools Gold.