Inner City - Good Life remixes
September 25
Kevin Saunderson looking P-I-M-P.
Those of you who keep up with the Twitter, er, o-sphere, might be aware of this already, but Geeneus has just put up a "refix" of Inner City's classic track "Good Life". It's on his myspace player - go and check it out. A UK Funky refix of such a legendary track has the potential to be all kinds of wrong, but luckily this one works - I think it's great in fact. The production's good, it's suitably respectful of the original - it'll do well, for sure. Geeneus should send me a copy immediately. I want it. If I was to be critical I'd say that the vocalist he has enlisted on this version doesn't have as great a voice as Paris Grey. But then not many do.
In doing this Geeneus joins a long list of producers who have remixed, refixed, covered, bootlegged and otherwise re-upped this tune - over 40, the last time I looked - including the likes of Derrick May, Carl Craig, Steve Hurley, Ken Ishii, Satoshi Tomie, Eric Prydz, Basement Jaxx and a whole ruck of others. So I thought I'd post up a few personal favourites for the weekend.
First up, Ben Sims. In which he completely demolishes the original, suffocating it with his trademark raging, heavily compressed drums. The mystique of Ben Sims' drum sound is a post for another day, methinks, but for now enjoy this, from around 2003 I think. Techno the way it used to be (pumelling, and possibly a bit overly macho in retrospect. But great).
Then there's this effort, from another techno producer, but about as far removed from techno as we could get. It's produced by Thomas Schumacher, with Kaori on vocals. This one's done as a broken beat / jazz kind of thing - swinging cymbals with a kind of half-step vibe going on, and a pretty catchy bassline to boot. A little bit tasteful? Never mind that, you'll be head-nodding and foot-tapping in no time.
Thirdly, lets have a listen to the CJ Mackintosh edit from 1993. It's got a classic US house vibe going - swung 909 beats, pianos, sax, strings, the works. A sound that we would later start to call 'Balearic', this is just unashamedly uplifting house. Wicked stuff.
And finally, let's just have a blast of the original. What is there to say about this that hasn't been said? Best riff ever? Catchy, instantly recognisable, that tight delay and meaty chord sound went on to be heard in hundreds of detroit techno records for the next two decades. The vocal is awesome and the beat sounds surprisingly hard - I don't know what he did to get it sounding that way (probably whacked it through the compressor on a really nice desk) but it really smacks.
---------
i.d.
Posted by bassmusic
