Some progress the old sound forward, but Gavin Turek brings it back to the 70’s in her latest EP Good Look for You. But she’s also teamed up with other notable producers, which gives her classic voice new flavor.
Gavin has been working with TOKiMONSTA and their juxed position in genre make for a beautiful collaboration. And even better, there are a number of my favorite young producers giving her a remix, especially Bishiclet & starRo. You know when some of the most talented music makers right now support her sound, including Mayor Hawthorne on his last tour, that it’s not just you.
You should also dance to last year’s list.
The first time I ran into Madelyn Grant’s name was on Odesza’s Sun Models. I had recently uploaded the track to SoundCloud and she had contacted me about including her name in the title. The only reason I hadn’t in the first place was because they really chopped and skewed her vocals, making her voice barely recognizable. But she was real nice about it and it seemed more than fair.
About two months later and I see Madelyn Grant on FKJ’s Waiting. I didn’t remember she was on Odesza’s track at first, but once I did I was all the more in love. Madelyn has a breathtaking voice, but even better she knows how to use it – a much bigger problem with most vocalists.
Since then Madelyn has collaborated with a favorite of mine, Emancipator. I asked her how she got to collaborate with all these legitimate producers and she said, I sent them my demos.
That’s it. In Odesza’s case they were requesting female vocalists, but the other two she just sent them a sample. That’s all it took. How the fuck does that happen? Oh wait, that doesn’t. Minus with Madelyn.
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I’ve put together a playlist of my favorite songs of her’s as well as another list for producers she should also send her music to. Although, this time I think they should be doing the reaching out.
When I first saw Bishiclet remixed Janet Jackson, I was like naaahh, he ain’t gonna top his Miguel remix or the other Janet remixes I collected. He did both. Well, this might not have the longevity of his Miguel remix, but we’ll see about that.
His So Excited remix was so unexpected. It’s so hard for any producer to be consistently good, let alone come up with something borderline trendsetting. What he did to Janet’s voice, pitchin em on high like that, is best described as sounding like Yolandi Visser of Die Antwoord, except not having to deal with her rap Ninja.
The first night I had with this, I played it over & over at least a dozen times.
Our electro funk from last year grew so much we decided to break it up & section it into a few playlists. First up comes from the groovier side.
I wanted to call this Groovewit hits, but Lauren talked me out of it. Generally speaking it lies in the mid-range of electro music with heavy synth influence and a whole lotta funky bass.
Let us know how well the songs flowed together for you.
It’s important to us.
I’ve listened to way too much music this year, probably around 12,000 new tracks (I tried calculating it). Most of the music was.. unfinished, to say the least, but we found a lot more songs worth keeping than any year before it.
A lot of new music emerged or reemerged over the year. Deep house was the big thing, but many discredit it because of the hype. It had its bad with its good. Our favorite new style goes to what doesn’t seem to have an official name yet. I’ve heard many call it kawaii, but I prefer vapor – this naming shit is more important than you’d think.
We’ve got 30 songs to show off, 11 artists and 20 playlists for you, but if that’s not enough… wait ’til next year.
Sometimes it’s more about the creativity than the quality in a remix. Some of these aren’t perfect, but they show a lot of potential. And that’s another good reason for remixing, to get producers just starting out vocals actually worth making something new out of.
This is our biggest remix playlist yet. We tried hard to remove as much as we could, I mean that’s our job, but let me tell you it’s just as hard, if not harder, removing tracks from a playlist than adding them in (as we mentioned in our how to playlist music article).
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There is no other sound more fun to dance to than disco. However fast or slow, it brings the spirit to soul music. This may only be our second mix of its kind (#1), but it’s got some soon to be disco legends for sure. So whether you’re alone or in public, get up & dance to this 13-track disco mix.
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More recently I’ve been looking deeper into the remixes I post and comparing them with their originals. The reason is because I started getting quite a few remix submissions that sounded great, but really didn’t do anything drastically different from its original.
In Bishiclet & Super Fuzzy’s remix of ‘Like The Dance Floor,’ the two take the best part of A-Trak’s single, the chorus, speeds ’em up and pushes out one easy-going, fun-loving reinterpretation – far different than its original. Trust me, this versions is much more satisfying.
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