Mine out on Vinyl today

Our single Mine on Under the Shade is now available on vinyl! It’s an especially dynamic release ,featuring guaranteed floor mover  remixes from the Eddie Mars, SAS, & The Revenge.

http://www.juno.co.uk/products/438910-01.htm

*****

There’s been so much work put into this it’s only appropriate to give credit where it’s due.

The original recording sessions took place well over a year ago in the studio of Bushwick Wizard, Eddie Mars, slightly after meeting the Vietcong Disco crew and exchanging emails over excitement for Mr. Mars live sound quality control (the guy manages to blend records, eq the main mixer and make weird sounds on a monophonic pocket synth all at once). I’m not quite sure any of us knew what exactly we were getting into, but a steady dose of  low-slung love funk found its way onto the tubes of one of the many mysteriously donated pieces of equipment in Mars’ studio. At the time, we were in the process of jumping ship from our abandoned house studio (all of our gear had experienced just the right amount of water damage), so even all of our shit was there. We ended up doing a live show  of the material we were toying around with at Mars’ studio, opening up for Rub&Tug at a suspicious Biker Bar. I think one person yelled “we came here to see DJs!” during our set, but considering I was yelling nonsensical harmonies for Joey through a vocoder at the time, i couldn’t really be bothered besides.

Joey Washington eventually joined the party in the studio, laying down what in the early stages already felt like some classic vocal hooks. Months later, endless session swaps between myself and Mr. Mars, parts sounding like they had run the prep school bus gauntlet back and forth through all sorts of filters, and the original mix of Mine started to take form.

More months later, after a bit of hoo-ha and unmentionable confusion, we finally confirmed a release of the track with Under the Shade. Mars started to conjure up his own production (s)** of the original session takes at that time. ** There were probably closer to 25 of these productions, all of them equally impressive. Mars eventually settled on a mix and the SAS & Revenge remixes followed per fine curation of David Griffith.

In conclusion of the long experience of working on this, it’s not only a sentimental single for us, but objectively a collection of tracks that serve any funky vinyl junky well. While the original can certainly serve the “DJ”, it’s intention is to be a humble and genuine reflection of the energy we recorded way back in those wintery Bushwick nights. It is what it is, and it should never be anything else. Dude, it’s a song, don’t give me any blah-dee-blah about adding 32 bars of drums between every section. Besides, we like making songs, and like listening to them on vinyl in our living room while we eat slow-cooked pulled pork. Again, thank you to David Griffith for supporting the notion of letting the original do it’s thing, and letting it live on vinyl to do it.

As for the remixes, the Mars interpretation is, as he’s put it to me, how he’d produced Pink Stallone. It’s a spot on attempt at doing this, it embodies our youthful grunge funk swag in a diamond crusted Eddie Mars box (and no DJ can pass it up). The arrangement seems to grow and spiral endlessly in a way that all of our tracks ever have attempted to.  In any case, he did produce Pink Stallone, its the A1 on this single, you can hear it first thing. You’ll love it.

SAS manages to ride a similar line. They make it dancey as hell but not the point where I’m embarrassed to play it for my punky friends. It lets the percussion fly true and fires off a serious stabby  dirty bass line, thank you gents for that. The fact that I can hear myself playing out of tune bongos with sticks in Eddie Mars’ room on such a slamming mix is exciting. It’s got the “b*tch I’m telling you how it is” romantic approach. I can’t fight that.

Finishing up, the Revenge comes through with what I’d describe as a sort of Master at Works-like dub of the track. I’m not going to try to over analyze what Masters at Work did, and in the same vein, I’m not going to try to over analyze what The Revenge does. The guys body of work is out of control and to think he spent thought on a Pink Stallone track is awesome. Seriously, did I ever think the Revenge would ever touch one of my tracks, absolutely not. But here he did, and you can tell this is a guy who doesn’t need to impress anyone, that’s a a great place to be for making seasoned tracks. It stay’s course, its pretty, and any girl that’s heard me playing it around has started shaking, so there you go.  It’s mature like those late-aged guys who can body surf waves for 200 yards without choking or getting scared by the jellyfish running up their swimsuit. Smooth.

Dance folks can be a little hypocritical when they jump on tracks for not “standing out” or “not punching hard enough” but also for being “too much like 90’s house” or something. They’ll be the first to hate on Loveshack when it comes on at their cousins wedding party too, even if every person in the room is dancing like crazy. Dance music is , in fairness, somewhat of a functional genre. But much like in architecture, or even in airplanes, function will constantly be challenged and consequently reconsidered by pointless acts of expression, often later called art.

Ciao.

ps: center sticker is killer, thank you Anna for that.

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