Total Redraw: Home Listening Edition

Remixes that really shake things up

No self-respecting music fan is a stranger to the idea of the remix. After a track is completed, the stems are passed off to other like-minded producers and are reshaped to allow the style and personality of the remixer to come out while elements of the original are retained. While the odd remix on the B-side of an EP really shines, they can all too frequently come across as unnecessary additions to the original mixes, so when a really good remix comes about you’re sure to take notice.

This feature doesn’t focus specifically on ‘great remixes’, but rather remixes where the producer has taken the core track and has really invigorated the original track, leaving it recognisably the same but taking the tune in a totally different direction. After much ploughing through my music library, I’d like to present some of the most successful remixes I’ve heard where the remixer on hand has really gone beyond the call of duty; and these will be shown  and discussed along with the original tracks.

Running through a real range of contemporary music, a lot of these will be dance-focused but some are even stranger takes on recognisable classics alongside less well-known contributions. So without further ado, let’s get listening and check out some of the best remixes to be found in the White Noise vaults.

This two-part series will be split, with the first section dedicated to home listening tracks and the latter a big playlist of remixed dance music. Enjoy part 1!

Gold Panda – Marriage (Forest Swords 1am Hotel Room Redraw) 

In this stunning rework of one of Gold Panda’s best tunes, the atmospheric Forest Swords completely rebuilds the track from the ground up, entirely with acoustic instrumentation. The melody is still there, but it’s hard to imagine a more imaginative and successful redraw.

Efdemin – Acid Bells (Martyn’s Bittersweet Mix)

Sounding more Aphex Twin than Efdemin, legend Martyn relegates the original’s driving rhythms to the background, allowing a haunting piano melody to take centre stage.

Aphex Twin – Untitled (Four Tet Mix)

Apparently devised at the tender age of 17, Kieran Hebden’s IDM-fuelled mix of one of Aphex Twin’s most brilliant ambient tracks is a dream collaboration that retains aspects of both producers’ styles.

Mount Kimbie – Maybes (James Blake Remix)

James Blake applies a trademark warmth to one of Mount Kimbie’s best, fuzzing up the duo’s crisp production and lending it a woozy dubstep momentum.

Fever Ray – If I Had A Heart (Fuck Buttons Remix) 

Here Fuck Buttons take Fever Ray’s darkness as far as it will stretch, wielding a driving 4/4 and growling bass frequencies to create something black and wildly hypnotic.

Fever Ray – When I Grow Up (Version by Lissvik) 

Alongside for comparison, the most bizarre remix here is courtesy of one half of Balearic duo Studio, as Lissvik sets Fever Ray’s straining vocals to bouncing house with tropical synthlines. The strangest thing isn’t that it works, it’s that it works so damn well.

Star Slinger – May I Walk With You

Although not technically a remix, Star Slinger’s rework of Life Without Buildings' The Leanover is a brilliant recreation, taking Sue Tompkins’ jittery vocals to their logical extreme alongside tough beats and some of the catchiest looping you’re likely to hear.

Bibio – Lover’s Carving (Letherette Remix)

This dreamy hip hop rework of Bibio’s upbeat classic works like a charm, chopping up the vocals while retaining the sunshine of the original. The only flaw is that it’s all too short.

Lianne La Havas – Forget (Shlohmo Remix)

Shlohmo on excellent remixing form again, applying Lianne La Havas’ vocals both in original and chopped forms to a dreamy soundscapes replete with clicks, blips and deep haunting bass.

Agaric – No Way I Know I Feel  (Axel Boman Remix) – Clips of Original

Axel Boman takes Agaric’s dense original and cleans it up, making that nagging vocal the centrepiece of a world of swirling samples and twinkling beats.

Shlohmo – Rained The Whole Time (Nicolas Jaar Remix) 

The superb Nicolas Jaar livens up Shlohmo’s melancholy original with harder woodblock beats, blowing up the guitar in the original alongside soulful beats and samples that shift and swirl magnificently.

Colonel Abrams – Trapped (Hell Interface Remix)

Boards of Canada, under their Hell Interface moniker, take chopped and screwed to a new deathly extreme in their growling slow-down of Colonel Abrams’ 80s classic.

Burial – Shell of Light (Shlohmo Remix)

Tampering with Burial is not done lightly, but Shlohmo nails this one, isolating the hopeful last 30 seconds of the original and casting them onto an emotional widescreen with deeper-than-deep bass and ghostly vocal touches.

Nuyorican Soul – I Am The Black Gold Of The Sun (4 Hero Remix)

It’d be hard to outdo the original, backed by Masters of Work production and Jocelyn Brown’s honey tones, but 4 Hero turns the tune into a feelgood jazzy odyssey, thoroughly living up to the glory of the original.

Feature: Vocal Exercises

Vocal sampling. The act of cutting a human voice from source audio and repurposing it in a new piece of music. It’s become fairly normal to hear a vocal sample adding an edge of humanity to a dance or electronic track at the moment, but how did vocal sampling become what it is today? And what exactly is it today? In this feature I want to examine what different producers are doing with vocals at the moment and why, but in order to do that we need to start at the beginning.

Royal House – Can You Party (1988)

I’m not going to get into discussing breakbeats or sampling itself, because there has already been plenty of interesting discourse on the subject. The first examples of vocal sampling in dance music seem to be in the Acid and Chicago House tracks of the late 80s. Once hardware had become complex enough to sample voices, songs started to emerge where vocals were sampled and manipulated rather than a vocalist having to physically record their voice for each track. These tended to be in the stuttered, repetitive vocal phrases that populated the genre, look at any of Todd Terry’s classic productions for reference points.

Youngbloods – Got Me Burnin’ Up (1991)

This technique was taken further in the East-coast sound of the early 90s, with the emergence of what we now know as Garage. By this point the actual words sampled tended to be an exciting or catchy line that would ramp up anticipation and enjoyment on the dancefloor, but at the same time the samples started to become used more and more as hooks and percussive elements as we recognise them today, removed from their original context and meaning. On Nightcrawlers’ Push The Feeling On (The Dub Of Doom) we can hear and early example of a vocal that has lost all meaning, used purely as a catchy melodic element. Although this sounds fairly average by today’s standards, one can imagine how it might be strange to have a human voice there that was manipulated into a form where it is impossible to discern the words, in what can essentially be seen as a levelling of the human voice into a base musical element. Of course this was nothing new considering the amount of wordless song that have existed throughout the ages, from pagan chants to choirs, but it was the first time that a vocal that once had meaning was deliberately manipulated through electronics to lose that meaning, and then repurposed as just another instrument.

Nightcrawlers – Push The Feeling On (The Dub of Doom) (1992)

From the beginning of sampling in the US, I now want to move on and focus this feature on the UK dance scene. The root of vocal sampling as we now know it in the Bass music scene is most clearly grounded in UK Garage, which took the aforementioned sounds of Todd Terry and co and gave them a hard UK edge, as well as pushing vocal manipulation a lot further than it had ever gone before. Artists like Todd Edwards and Tuff Jam cut up multiple vocal samples and laced them together to form the melodic core of their tracks, retaining the warmth of the human voice (especially important in their dark Garage soundscapes) while stripping away any meaning whatsoever, and letting the sample work just as another element in the sound.

Tuff Jam – Key Dub (1999)

As UK Garage charted a slow shift towards Dubstep in the British underground, use of vocals diminished. Excepting occasional use of brooding voices, early Dubstep was characterised by the space and darkness of its sound, and although UK Garage-style sampling continued in some respects, the technique was not furthered in a major way for several years.

Burial - Archangel (2007)

The next producer to really hit the Electronic mainstream with innovative sampling was Burial, a producer I’m sure you all know well. Although his sources were nothing new, he used his samples to evoke a melancholy and darkness rather than a catchy hook, which was unusual at the time. Added to this, he expressed a fondness for pitching male voices up and female voices down to create “sexy vibe” and an ambiguity of gender, another technique that is fairly commonplace by now. Burial  stated while discussing the early UK Garage scene in a 2007 interview with The Wire, “I’d love these vocals that would come in, not proper singing but cut-up and repeating, and executed coldly. It was like a forbidden siren.” It’s a simple description for a musical technique that has accelerated Burial to Electronic stardom, where he introduced samples just as much to highlight absence as their presence, as can be seen in a 2009 interview with Fact; “That’s the sound I love…like embers in the tune…little glowing bits of vocals…they appear for a second, then fade away and you’re left with an empty, sort of air-duct sound…something that’s eerie and empty.”

XI - Squeeze (2012)

Fast forward to the last few years, and vocal sampling is everywhere. There are more producers than you can count who wield their samples to achieve the same effect as Burial, as well as a few others who have taken his style even further into the dark. See for example XI’s recent single Squeeze, in which a super-clipped vocal sample is treated and "de-oxygenated” (as RA described it) in a fashion that highlights a humanity and warmth that has been stripped away, strengthening the menacing, inhuman feel to its tough percussive workout. XI further dehumanizes the voice by pitching it up and down to form a skipping melodic variation, proving how far a voice can be taken from its original meaning and humanity. It is curious to imagine that a producer would choose to add a person’s voice which makes a song feel less human, but it is a potent tool which adds to the paranoid power of the track.

Brenmar - Temperature Rising (2011)

Producers are now using cut-up vocals not just to express a human touch to contrast a moody soundfield, as Burial did, but to other purposes. In Temperature Rising Brenmar was just one of many producers who twinned choppy RnB vocals with fast-tempo Bass production to demonstrate a silky, overt sex appeal, while in the second You on Gold Panda’s Lucky Shiner album, a single-word vocal sample repeats to a powerfully mournful effect. It’s clear this particular style of vocal sampling can be manipulated to evoke almost any emotion the producer wants.

Gold Panda – You (2010)

Joy Orbison - Hyph Mngo (2009)

Nowadays the current Bass scene is saturated with artists cutting up RnB and Funk vocals to varying degrees of success, but it begs the question of why an artist would prefer to chop up their vocals than leave them as whole phrases. Two plausible answers occur to me, the first musical and the second more based in meaning. Some producers use cut up vocals almost as a human alternative to a synth, as merely another musical tool to be manipulated and sequenced into the melody of a track. In a song like Disclosure’s i love...that you know or Joy Orbison's classic Hyph Mngo, a heavily treated vocal line, with the actual words often  (or completelyindiscernible, forms the central hook of the track. It’s an interesting idea to remove meaning from words to just hear the melody of language, and a producer’s willingness to just let a manipulated vocal line be the core of a track is intriguing, trading the meaning of words for their musicality.

Benjamin Damage & Doc Daneeka – Halo feat. Abigail Wyles (2012)

The second reason I can think of to chop vocals in this way is to do with the meaning and emotion evoked by the words in the listener. Simply put, if a vocal is treated so the words are difficult to make out, then it’s likely that the listener will attribute their own language and meaning to the song. The result of this is that the song forces no specific emotion on the listener, more a general mood, to which the listener can attribute the words and sentiment that personally suit them at the time. It is irrelevant to consider whether this is a case of the listener subconsciously ‘hearing what they’re feeling’ in terms of language or if it’s a more conscious process of application, because either way by becoming linguistically ambiguous, a song actually increases its emotive scope. Benjamin Damage and Doc Daneeka’s Halo is a perfect example of this, with Abigail Wyles’ muffled vocals freely interpretable by the listener as long as their chosen meaning suits the subdued vibes of the song. It seems almost paradoxical that by making a voice less recognisably human you can actually increase its emotional appeal, but this is the intriguing effect of a lot of contemporary electronic music.

Wolfgang Voigt – Kafkatrax 2.1 (2011)

With the rapid development of audio manipulation tools, the use of vocal samples is now only really limited by the producer’s imagination. There are only two ways to push the use of these samples; forward and backward, and there are great contemporary producers pursuing the path in both directions. For an example of someone pushing use of vocals forward into more extreme territory, one need look no further than legendary German producer Wolfgang Voigt, who many of you will know as Ambient Techno producer Gas and the head of Cologne-based label Kompakt. In his recent Kafkatrax series, Voigt producer a series of tracks comprised solely of vocals cut and treated from a Kafka audiobook excepting the inclusion of a single kick drum. The result is as cerebral and successful as any of Voigt’s work, the vocals assembled into deep, hypnotic Techno with some sounds still recognisable as human voice and others so far removed as to sound like they were recorded entirely from a synthesiser.  This is, in some ways, the upper limit of that trade-off between musicality and meaning, the press release states that the use of Kafka, “is entirely meaningless to the final musical product – Voigt is only interested in the sound of recited vocal text.”

Doc Daneeka & Abigail Wyles – Tobyjug (2012)

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are producers who traditionally used samples that are now drafting in vocalists to sing original vocal tracks for their Electronic productions. Doc Daneeka, who built his reputation on hard-bodied UK Funky and Bass music, reigned in the force of his productions and once more collaborated with vocalist Abigail Wyles to produce the Electronic soul ballad Tobyjug, in which he allows her voice to take centre-stage, lyrics and all. There is certainly a trend emerging of vocalists being called in for Dance and Electronic productions, from the poppier end of the spectrum with Jessie Ware (recently produced for by Julio Bashmore), to Funky muse Fatima, to SBTRKT favourite Sampha.

SBTRKT – Hold On (feat. Sampha) (2011)

So on one side we now have experimental tracks entirely made of vocals, and on the other producers are returning to the historic technique of inviting original vocalists to feature in tracks, not to mention the thousands of producers working and sampling somewhere between the two extremes. It’s important to realise that those that feature vocalists shouldn’t be seen as regressive in any way, Dance music has always run in cycles with techniques going in and out of fashion, and furthermore the application of new styles of Electronic production mean the results sound nothing like the 20-year old songs that used live vocals in a similar fashion. It’s impossible to predict where vocal sampling can go from here, but considering the resourcefulness of producers in using the human voice as a tool so far in Electronic music, it’s probably best to not have any specific expectations. The world of Electronic music moves so fast and offers so many surprises that you probably won’t have to wait too long to find out anyway.

First Choice – Let No Man Put Asunder (1977) 

Before the playlist, I'll leave you with this First Choice classic, almost every single line of which has been sampled in one dance track or another. See how many you can recognise. Also, listen out for a very early example of vocal manipulation at the end of the track.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the discussion on vocal sampling, included below is a selection of a few tracks from the last few months that have used vocals in particularly interesting or gratifying ways. Enjoy!

Tracklist:

Bondax – All Inside

Arthur Beatrice – Midland (Bwana Remix)

Shlohmo – Wen Uuu

Airhead – Wait

Lianne La Havas – Forget (Shlohmo Remix)

Above & Beyond – Love Is Not Enough (Synkro Remix)

Burial – Ashtray Wasp

Electronic

This list is a little less melancholy. Opening with Shlohmo's brand new Sink which emotes through downbeat percussion and lush oriental synths, this is followed by the ever-weird Odd Nosdam of anticon fame, with The Kill Tone Two in which a dusky harp melody is damaged by drum machines and off-kilter rap. Mount Kimbie's Between Time twins slow reverb-laden guitar with sharp beats, setting up a very young Kieran Hebden's first big hit, Everything Is Alright. From here we move to more solemn territory, Nicolas Jaar's distinctive minimal soundscapes in the quiet and perfect Colomb, and How to Dress Well's deeply sorrowful Suicide Dream 2. Drifting into less emotional waters with another track from Shlohmo's new album which leads to the inimitable Boards of Canada's fantastic drone piece Corsair. This flows into Burial's most ambient track on record, the short but beautiful UK from his masterwork Untrue. Fennesz lifts the mood slightly with the melancholy fractured summer pop of Caecilia and then a one-two punch of Dilla tracks injects a little soul into the proceedings. After this Memory Tapes' lovely instrumental closer Run Out breathes life and hope into the melancholy sound with a gorgeous melody, followed by my very favourite Gold Panda track, the second You in which a beautiful operatic sample soars over switching beats. Then, let it all fade away with the Scottish duo once more, this time with Farewell Fire which loops more and more quietly until nothing remains.

Sweet

Since I Left You – Avalanches

Shoo Be Doo – Letherette

Stay Close – Delorean

Shy – A Sunny Day in Glasgow

Drama Cum Drama – Autre Ne Veut

The Nothing – Baths

My Girls – Animal Collective

Kim & Jessie – M83

Aminals - Baths

Gravity – Lusine

Sun – Caribou

Summer of Summer – Lone

Marriage – Gold Panda

Now You See Me – Emeralds

Rill Rill – Sleigh Bells

I've saved my favourite list til last, these are the sugar-sweet sounds of the synthiest of summers, moving between the light and dark of summer electro. Kicking off with my favourite song of all time (I know, that's a big statement but there you go, this is it), the Avalanches' stunning Since I Left You (I've left the brilliant video in there too), this playlist begins with some shining summer beats; Delorean's Ibiza-pop Stay Close shimmers with fun and Baths' most recent single The Nothing is another banger.

After a few classics from Animal Collective and M83 we move to choppier pastures, another great Baths track, Lusine's fantastic vocal cuts in Gravity and Gold Panda's unforgettable Marriage. The list rounds off with Emeralds' stunning fusion of the analogue and the digital in Now You See Me, and what is probably the summeriest track I've ever heard is saved til last, Sleigh Bells' synth-pop anthem Rill Rill (also replete with a rather gorgeous video).

P.S - I really wanted to stick Blue Hawaii's Belize into this list but couldn't find it on youtube, and after wasting an hour trying to work out how to upload it I gave up. But you can check it out here if you're interested.

Over the next week or so I'll be doing a selection of reviews of some of the best albums for summer, so let these lists whet your appetites and get some sun til then.

Gold Panda – Lucky Shiner

The electro scene is always bursting with artists trying to push their technology and do something which actually sounds different, but the music tends to either go down the route of dance or home-listening. Gold Panda's aesthetic seems to aim for a curious middle ground. His short samples and tech melodies hint at dance music, but the lo-fi fuzz and slow rhythmic variations are more suited to home listening. Throughout this LP he combines an undeniable warmth with brilliant songwriting and composition, and the album just keeps on giving.

The album crackles into existence with the sound of a record being played, and the far off one word vocal sample of You is turned into a beat itself, bursting exuberantly into life. The beats are hard but not overwhelming, and the two vocal samples are weaved together with an expert intricacy that showcases the skill and care that has been put into every track on this LP. He deals in feelings of nostalgia and contemplation, the brief but sweet guitar instrumental of Parents opening with a vocal sample of his own grandmother indicates the often thought-provoking nature of his tracks.

Not all of the tracks are cerebral, however (and even when they are his music is never boring or unsatisfying). Snow & Taxis opens with a propulsive single synth note hammered home with a slight radio fuzz, changing up and then riding beneath a swelling accompaniment and eventually joined by twinkling starlight-synths. The music combines this drive with a hypnotic edge – his samples are always clipped so carefully that there is a feeling imbued of repetition, of memory recurring and decaying, of forgotten sunsets and half-remembered faces. Stellar highlight Marriage is another more powerful track, a recurring synth overlaid with oriental strings and a deep bass that is relentlessly satisfying. The lo-fi textures are expertly implemented throughout the album to give the songs a lush sonic depth.

Although the album is backloaded with more slow, contemplative pieces, Gold Panda doesn't fall into the standard trap of letting the standard slip on an electro LP; these tracks are as exquisitely composed and as endlessly listenable as the more dancey cuts. I'm With You But I'm Lonely builds gloriously slowly from a meandering hazy synth line into an increasingly strong tribal rhythm, and each musical movement occurs at exactly the right point, no melody outstays its welcome or recedes before it has had proper time to shine. Some of the later tracks admittedly can take a little longer to appreciate, but the way some of the slower tracks on the album unfurl is so masterful it would be a crime to just listen to the poppier cuts.

More evidence of Gold Panda's compositional genius can be seen in the very structure of the album; the ebullient opener You is bookended on the other side by the beautiful and fierce longing of the closer, also called You. Elsewhere, effusively catchy Before We Talked is given a sense of continuation in the darker and more complex After We Talked, the straightforward melodies and synths of the first warped into something emotionally very different, a distorted mist of mixed up feelings. More impressively his clipped samples definitely show they have legs in longest track India Lately which travels from a building synth line into a thumping beat before almost collapsing under its own weight and intricacy, decaying into the ether towards the close of the track, with one final and fiery reprieve.

Every track on this album is expertly composed and thoughtfully performed, imbuing the tracks with all the precision and mastery of Aphex Twin alongside a nostalgia and warmth that is entirely Gold Panda's own. Not every track is superb, but this debut album arrives as a fully formed accomplished vision, bursting with life and beauty. A real success.

9/10

Remixes #1 - Dance Mixes

I've reviewed a good few albums so far, and every so often one artist you like will remix another, and sometimes they get it just right.

Here's a little collection of some great tracks that have been remixed to make them more dancefloor-friendly:

Burial & Four Tet - Moth (Silinder Remix)

Great remix giving the whole track a lot more structure and punch.

Fever Ray – If I Had a Heart (Fuck Buttons Remix)

Really dark remix with classic Fuck Buttons stylings in re-invention; a great big wash of sound and a pounding beat.

Gold Panda – Marriage (Star Slinger Remix)

Fantastic remix with a dubby throb and a mad, rushing appropriation of all the elements that make the original so great.

How to Dress Well – Ready for the World (XXXY Remix)

XXXY injects garage with great drops and foot-shuffling beat.

M83 – Run Into Flowers (Jackson's Midnight Fuck Remix)

Glitchy appropriation of M83'S untreated synths. One of the best mixes I've ever heard.

Radiohead – Reckoner (Twelves Remix)

The much-remixed track is brilliantly remodelled into this with great beats driving Yorke's classic falsetto way into the distance.