I am yours now

While I don't agree with the Fader blog's description of Falty DL's remix of the xx's "Islands" (routine rhythms? gentle?! this track bangs!), I must thank them greatly for bringing it to my attention. Two of our favorite flavors of 2009 team up in 2010. I like it. Get the mp3 here.

YMD's Super Sweet Sixteen: REMIX EDITION (part 2)

8. Coyote - "Too Hard (Aeroplane Remix)" (Is It Balearic? Recordings, 2007)
Aeroplane were unbelievably on fire in 2007 and 2008, and this is my favorite of their wonderful string of remixes and singles. It starts off as a nice little balearic disco track, and then suddenly shifts, with a sublime new riff at around 2'47 that happens to be one of the prettiest moments of the decade. From there it's off to the beach at sunrise and away with any sense of worry or dread you may have.

7. M83 - "Teen Angst (Luciano Remix)" (Goom, 2005)
Luciano's remix of M83s thoroughly maximalist "Teen Angst" starts off with a fading memory of that tracks adrenaline-fueled whir, and quickly forgets it in favor of some very Luciano sounding drums that are soon joined by M83's vocals. The next 6 minutes are quite pretty, as Luciano subtly plays with the drums while letting the vocals run their course, and then the reverbed strings come in and things get a touch sublime. Then the strings disappear again, and the drums switch up and finally, after eight minutes, seem to get a little more in touch with the vocals. It's a beautiful journey.

6. Rubies - "Room Without a Key (Version by Studio)" (Tellé, 2008)
Containing certainly the oddest time signature on the list (I count it as either four measures of 3/4 + one of 2/4 or just straight up 14/4), Studio's version "Room Without a Key" by California band Rubies is 9 minutes of gentle riffs varied and layered on top of gentle percussion. It shimmers in a somewhat self-aware way, but that doesn't stop it from sounding light sunlight peeking through your window shades as you wake up at the exactly perfect place and time.

5. Rufus Wainwright - "Tiergarten (Supermayer Remix)" (Polydor, 2007)
Superpitcher and Michael Mayer first take Rufus' "Tiergarten" and make it a glacially perfect ballad and only then, two and a half minutes in, do they give away that this is a dance remix. This is the Kompakt style, clean, anthemic, melodically interesting, at its very best. And fuck it, because it was only ever a white label and you're not going to be able to get the full 13 minute experience on YouTube, here's a download link at Mediafire.

4. Delia Gonzales & Gavin Rossum - "Relevee (Carl Craig Remix)" (DFA, 2006)
I've written about this one here rather recently, and I stand by that short blurb. It's just super amazing. It's the soundtrack to the best movie John Carpenter never directed. It's the most purposeful, glee-filled robot with a knowledge of the history of techno. I'll stop now.

3. Pär Grindvik - "Do Us Part (Len Faki Remix)" (Drumcode, 2007)
Released to relatively little critical fanfare at the end of 2007, Len Faki's remix of "Do Us Part" is one of my favorite techno tracks of the decade. It has a one beat bassline, it doesn't have any particularly big, hands-in-the-air type breakdowns or build up, yet it works perfectly for me as a pure dance monster, in the right mood, this destroys me.

2. Gwen Stefani - "What You Waiting For (Jacques Lu Cont Thin White Duke Mix)" (Interscope, 2004)
There were a few years in the mid-00s when everything Stuart Price (aka Jacques Lu Cont aka Thin White Duke) touched turned to gold. This mix of Gwen Stefani's "What You Waiting For" adds what might be the most perfect synth line of the decade to an already great song and transforms a heart-pounder in to a melancholic epic.

1. Paleface ft. Kyla - "Do You Mind (Crazy Cousinz Remix)" (Maximum Bass, 2008)
This is that song that (through this ILM thread) introduced me to one of my main late 00s obsessions, funky house, so it holds a very special place in my heart. I'm not sure if I even have the origins of this track 100% correct, but I guess it's a remix of a bassline track by Paleface (who is actually one half of Crazy Cousinz). I had to do some searching to find even a clip of the original. Anyways, the original seems to me completely irrelevant in the face of this beautiful, sexy, poppy, Soca-drenched, and most of all incredibly fun Crazy Cousinz mix. It's as good a representation as any of what I love about music at the end of the 00s, so it gets the number one spot (this is the version you want to listen to on Youtube).

Any ideas for what countdowns we should to do next?

YMD's Super Sweet Sixteen: REMIX EDITION (part 1)

The so-called remix culture of the last half decade has, I'm sure, brought a lot of people into dance music through remixes of their favorite pop or indie artists. With the availability of new, easy to obtain software and a million mp3 blogs, anyone can cut up their favorite track with a club beat or a different instrumental and have a dance-floor banger ready to go. But, this democratization of dance, as wonderful in theory as anything that allows more people access to creativity and active participation, has also created a lot of incredibly cheap and half-assed sounding music. So this list is free of bootlegs, not because I am elitist enough to think that that process cannot create good music, but because to my ears there were simply a whole lot of "professionals" doing this shit a lot better.

I specified Dance remixes because Rap remixes are a whole different thing unto themselves (as are R. Kelly remixes), so maybe we'll get back to those later. But for now, on we go with my favorite house, techno, electro, and disco versions of the decade, starting off, of course, with me cheating by throwing down some honorable mentions.

Honorable Mentions (alpha by remixer):
- Aeroplane's mixes of Friendly Fires' "Paris" and Grace Jones' "Williams Blood"
- Ame's remix of Etienne Jaumet "Repeat After Me", hypnotic 3/4 techno
- Carl Craig's mixes of "Part of Me" by Ayumi Hamasaki, Faze Action's "In the Trees," and Francesco Tristano's "the Melody"
- the famous DFA remix of Le Tigre's "Deceptacon"
- DJ Koze's off-beat remix of Matthew Dear's "Elementary Lover"
- Ink & Needle's futuristic remix of Amox and Atle's "A Witch Kiss"
- the Joakim Italo Dub of "Budapest" by Poni Hoax
- the M.A.N.D.Y. vs. Booka Shade version of Laurie Anderson's classic "O Superman"
- Martyn's house-influenced dubstep remix of "Seven" by Fever Ray
- Kris Menace's French House take on Roisin Murphy's "Overpowered"
- Theo Parrish's gauzy, kick-less remix of Jill Scott's "Slowly Surely"
- Radio Slave's merciless remix of "Deer in the Headlights" by Chelonis R. Jones
- Tobias Thomas and Michael Mayer's remix of Ada's cover of "Maps"

16. the Whitest Boy Alive - "Golden Cage (Fred Falke Remix)" (Modular, 2008)
Arguably less heralded than his partner Alan Braxe, never mind the holy robots, Fred Falke released by favorite remix by a French House mainstay this decade. He turns Erland Oye and co's bedroom funk song "Golden Cage" into an epic of yearning. This is just on the right side of maudlin, dipping its toe in to that pool more than occasionally.

15. Kylie Minogue - "Come Into My World (Fischerspooner Remix)" (Parlophone, 2002)
I was late enough to dance music to miss both Electroclash and most of its backlash, but this is certainly the best thing I've heard from Fischerspooner. But that somewhat cheap sounding bass line is somehow perfect to offset that lushness that is as much a part of Kylie's persona as her music from around this time.

14. the Knife - "We Share Our Mother's Health (Trentemøller Remix)" (Rabid Records, 2006)
I always seem to forget how great this is when I'm not listening to it. And then it comes on, and wow. The beat to this one is fairly straight ahead, but all the minor syncopation Trentemøller throws in on the hi-hats and toms is great fun. And then the handclap assisted breakdown comes in and that is just mindblowingly great.

13. LCD Soundsystem - "Tribulations (Lindstrøm Mix)" (DFA/EMI, 2005)
Lindstrøm's "Tribulations" remix is a great example of the man's gift at going out towards space while still sounding organic and loose. There seem to be two basslines working together, a big funky one providing the main riff and robotic, super-repetitive one holding things steady (and coming to the fore during the repetition of the titular lyric). Like most of Lindstrøm's best work, this one is constantly evolving, moving, and fun.

12. Cortney Tidwell - "Don't the Stars Keep Us Tangled Up (Ewan's Objects in Space Mix)" (2006)
Ewan Pearson takes Cortney Tidwell's soft, lovely voice and takes in on a blissful ride for just short of 12 minutes. This could hardly be any more lush. About seven minutes in this comes to a head with these shimmering, overpowering synths that almost match Cortney's voice for loveliness, until her cooing comes in after the beat comes back and puts any doubt to rest.

11. Jose James - "Desire (Moodymann Remix)" (Brownwood Recordings, 2008)
This is a house torch song, and one of the most beautiful things I've heard this year. It's a late night heartbreaker, this one. Moodymann's drums, as well as the space without them, are sublime. This is a track that breathes, and not just because of its breathy vocals.

10. Shackleton - "Blood On My Hands (Ricardo Villalobos Apocalypso Now Mix)" (Skull Disco, 2007)
Like many Villalobos tracks, this takes its sweet time (18 minutes to be exact) and is dark as night. It's also kind of a masterpiece, and one of the first great meeting points between dubstep and minimal techno. It's kind of one of those things you have to experience, extremely detailed and rewarding to the patient while being quite moving at the same time

9. Nathan Fake - "The Sky Was Pink (James Holden Remix)" (Border Community, 2004)
A monster of atmosphere, an amazing example of the potential of techno to be unsettling and at the same time make you want to dance as hard as you ever have before. Holden takes Fake's original, a cool track but not a dancefloor banger, and pushes all the right buttons to make it a classic.

Part two coming soon with more beats, long tracks, syncopation, and sublime moments of beauty.

So majestic

Courtesy of Billadelphia Donahue. This should really have taken off.

I am here with you

133. Michael Jackson - "You Are Not Alone (Franctified Club Mix)" (Epic, 1995)

The trivia-minded among us know that "You Are Not Alone" was a) written by R. Kelly and b) MJ's last #1 hit in the US. But I had no clue until after MJ's death that it had an absolute stormer of a remix by Frankie Knuckles. He starts it off like a rather typical, fun Frankie house production, and then some familiar strings come on and he fucks with the rhythm a little, and then, bam! it's "You Are Not Alone" and you can't stop singing along and smiling. In my brief experience with it, it's almost impossible to even think about mixing out of it until there's like 30 seconds to go.

(Also, with my genre preferences/biases fully in view, this is like the exact opposite of the million bootleg mixes that clutter Hype Machine these days)

:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

244. the Beach Boys - "God Only Knows (Aeroplane Edit)" (2008, bootleg)

Who knows if this ever gets released, prolly not, but when I first saw this Youtube I listened to it like 5 times in a row, and then when someone on ILM uploaded an mp3 ripped from a podcast, I listened to that like 5 times in a row. If I heard this out I don't know what I would do.

I haven't yet figured out what it is about the beat that, for me, largely tones down the creepy undertones of the original ("I'll make you so sure about it", etc.). Maybe it's because the Aeroplane version, even when I'm listening to it alone, makes me think of one day singing along to it with a bunch of people in the middle of a dance floor (click), which draws out the euphoria and buries the desperation. I dunno. I have to get dressed for New Year's and start drinking. Maybe we'll think more about this later. For now, happy dancefloor and open bar wishes from all of us here at YMD. See ya in the New Year (when maybe I'll do a slight redesign to make it easier on deez newfangled wide YouTube videos).