Yes indeed, Lunies, it's that time of year again. The time of year when I decide that a healthy amount of sleep and a stress free life is for IDIOTS, and commit to doing twelve songs between now and Christmas Eve! The theme for this years album (because they have themes now apparently) isn't quite as grand as last years by any stretch, mind; this time around, I'm solely doing remixes of my own work, from more recent tracks to stuff froom way back in the beginning. It promises to be a wild ride, so stick around and enjoy the fireworks~
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TRACK 1: (NOT ENOUGH) SUNSHINE [TWELVE DAYS AT BUTLINS MIX]
ORIGINAL ARTIST: WALTZER JAM
REMIX ARTIST: WALTZER JAM
I can't say for sure whether I'd planned to return to (Not Enough) Sunshine quite this quick, but once I'd settled on making this album a Remix Only deal, I knew I wanted it on here in some capacity (and I knew I wanted to do some wacky shit with a weather report and an ad for a holiday place, hence the intro). I went into this one knowing I wanted it to stay fairly true to the original in an attempt to give it that authentic "late 90s pop dance record B side" feel, and by all accounts I think I hit the mark; my getting better at hanging on to some riffs and samples from my work really saved my ass in that regard (and will probably continue to do so as the album goes on). Fun fact: almost everything from 3:17 onwards had to be recreated one or even two times, because M2K decided it was in a crash happy mood last night. A good omen if ever there was one.
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TRACK 2: THE DEVIL'S NEAREST NEIGHBORS [J1818's "BAD BOY DISCO" REMIX]
ORIGINAL ARTIST: GONKAKA
REMIX ARTIST: J1818
ORIGINAL TRACK 1 / ORIGINAL TRACK 2
Proving my luck weren't great this time around initially, this song actually started out as a J1818 remix of Mental Machine Music instead. That idea was shitcanned solely because I just couldn't get the idea's I was mucking around with to sound interesting, and left me quickly scrambling for a song I could refit to work with the J1818 track model- thankfully, The Devil's Nearest Neighbors absolutely did, and the track came out fairly easily afterward the change in focus. Less thankfully, there's some minor audio clipping in the later half of the song I didn't catch in time to possibly fix- it's very minor and Dio didn't seem to pick up on it during her listens, but it was enouggh to send me into a bout of mini despair at 4am.
That aside, though, this is probably my favourite version of the song (of which there've been three so far). It's leaning more on the Euro House side of the work I do under J1818 then the New Beat/Rave Beat side, but there's a certain charm to the mellow, chilled out groove the song has going on, and I'm really quite happy with how the chopped and looped breaks came out sounding. Also, any song where I end up using the Pressure Me Lead patch from the Roland D-50 (and for a solo, no less) is always an instant perk of the job for me. Fuckin' love that patch, I do.
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TRACK 3: THE BITTER BATTLE OF MANOR ROAD [MK. IV ESCORT's TRIGGER PATROL REMIX]
ORIGINAL ARTIST: DECON THEED
REMIX ARTIST: MK. IV ESCORT
Man, my poor Mk. IV Escort alias has been so badly neglected the last couple of years. That's partially what lead to the addition of the alias to the remix roster; the other reason is that I honestly wanted to try my hand at a Footwork/Juke/Bassline etc. type cut, and have done for some time, so why NOT do something like that for Christmas? Ain't nothing more Merry then a juke joint, fam. For a first attempt at relatively new ground, it's not half bad; certainly very minimal in places, but I was kinda aiming for something that was a little more stripped down just by way of a change. What's also surprising is just how quick the song came together in the grand scheme of things; it took barely three hours, compared to the far longer slogs through the prior two tracks.
The decision to remix The Bitter Battle Of Manor road, a Decon Theed cut from the very first Christmas album back in 2012, came mostly out of just thinking that the stabbing chord pattern from that song would work in this song of style, and partially out of a desire to try and keep SOME level of winter/christmas themeing going through the tracks, however loosely. The title is a reference to a snowball fight me and some friends had in a December long ago now- back in 2008, I think- which took place on a road in my neighborhood named Manor Road at like 1-to-2am.
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TRACK 4: AGAINST THE DARK, WE STAND UNITED (BATTLE AGAINST A NIGHTMARISH FOE)
ORIGINAL ARTIST: ARCADE CHILD
REMIX ARTIST: ARCADE CHILD
I can't count how many times over the years I've said something to the effect of "I could do that song so much better these days" in regards to some of my older work. Whilst the entire 12 Remixes project could be considered me putting my money where my mouth is, this arrangement of "Stand Up Strong, And Never Say Die!", a track I did in 2010, is the real test of that theory.
The original song was a highly melodic, 100% electronic affair that leaned towards a synthpop or electropop track, and for the time, it was one of my better pieces. But it had long since started showing it's age, and it wasn't quite packing the emotional impact and rawness I felt the melodies were fit for, so a higher energy arrangement was a must. I think the original idea was to do something that tossed elements of dance/rave tracks and synth fusion together, but as the song went on I drove it further and further into straight up synth fusion territory ala-Street Fighter EX- to the point that I wound up cutting an entire section out of the song in post because it didn't gel with the rest of it (that's why the reverb cuts off suddenly around the 2:20 mark). Not exactly the most professional edit job, I know, but it was an acceptable blow over a song with a dodgey section left intact. I'm incredibly proud of the final result here; the various melodies work so much better in this slightly different key/at this faster tempo, the arrangement flows very nicely without feeling too "standard Decon" in how it gets from start to finish, and I'm really happy with all the little touches in sample choices- I always have a blast working with slap bass, putting in the work to do "realistic" drums is a challenge well worth the resulting sound it lends to a track, and as I said back on the J1818 track, any song where I get to use the "Pressure Me Lead" patch from the Roland D-50 is always going to be favourite with me.
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TRACK 5:TOPPLING TITANS (BOSS BATTLE) [FROM "MISFIT MANOR"]
ORIGINAL ARTIST: GONKAKA
REMIX ARTIST: GONKAKA
So, some of you may remember Terror On St. Scratch's Even from the 2013 Christmas album; I'm not ashamed to admit that one was thrown together fairly quickly, partially due to time constraints and partially out of need to have something for the day. Part of why I started doing stuff in advance last year on is to avoid this very situation.
Dio, however, really grew fond of the song- which makes sense, as it was based on ideas from her Misfit Demons series- and when I asked her if there was any specific material she wanted me to remix for this year, she specifically requested that one, redone as a "boss" type track. So I went and gone and done and did it.
The biggest challenge was mostly thinking of ways to expand the song from what little material was there to begin with; I axed the long slow intro, leaving only about 50 seconds of stuff from the original track. However, I was lucky in that I had a vague idea of where I wanted the song to go in the very early stages, and ideas on what to do with each section started coming in once I'd run with it. I'm phenomenally happy with the result, really; some of the notes in the melody recreation (which had to be done from scratch) are a little off, but they're mostly accurate, the cheesy-but-charming synth rock vibe I was going for works like a charm, and I'm specifically really happy with how the two different breakdown sections came out. It's still likely to be the shortest of the songs on the album, but it's got much more substance to it then the original (and it obviously SOUNDS like I put more effort into it, which is largely what I was worried about).
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TRACK 6: GREY MEN ROAD TRIP 2015
ORIGINAL ARTIST: VISOR JACK
REMIX ARTIST: VISOR JACK
Y'know, I don't think I made it quite obvious enough that I'm a fan of Fake Blood with this one. I dunno, can you tell?
Blatant sarcasm aside, one of the hardest non-musical tasks in preparing for 12 Remixes was picking what songs to remix, let alone how to remix them. I knew I wanted a healthy stable of recent stuff and older stuff, but as for what specifically has mostly remained fluid. Grey Men Road Trip, a far-too-repettitive house jam I did back in 2010, was one of the songs that I stuck with after choosing, and that's probably a good thing, because ideas started coming to me more or less right after finishing Toppling Titans. In a rare stroke of luck for me, it actually came out more or less exactly like the imaginary song constructed in my head did; the middle/"bass" breakdown sections I decided upon "on the day", but things like recreating the chords/bass/'melody' from the original song to sound like a sample from a funk record, a sample from Plan 9, and even the way that first drum break was cut were all there in my head before I even laid the track out.
It's one of my favourites on the album so far, for three reasons. First of all, I've wanted to do a twitch house style joint just like this for ages, and finally managed to see it through; secondly, I actually really like the contast between this and some of the other material- like, compare this to Toppling Titans, they don't sound like they were written by the same person, and for me that's kind of a plus; finally, I'm always getting told I need to upgrade to this program or that program, and thus I take a sincerely perverse pleasure in taking software as old and esoteric as Music 2000, and doing a track in a genre that was developed years after that software was made (practically a decade after, in this case).
Also WOOOOOOO HALFWAY POINT HOLY SHIT
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TRACK 7: EVEN DEMONS SEE THE VALUE OF OUR CAPITALIST CULTURE [THE TWISTED KERCHIEFS' QUIET NIGHT IN REMIX]
ORIGINAL ARTIST: DAMN THAT ROTTER!!!
REMIX ARTIST: THE TWISTED KERCHIEFS
So. This is a bit of a weird one.
Partially to keep the styles somewhat varied (and partially to utilize aliases I very rarely use), The Twisted Kerchiefs was always slated to be used for a remix this year. Originally, it was going to be Software Rebellion, but as I am a highly unprofessional and undecisive blob of human waste I decided at the last minute that I wanted to tackle Even Demons See The Value Of Our Capitalist Culture under the name. Because I'm legitimately fascinated (and amused) by the idea of taking a song and doing it in an "opposite" style, kinda like what Andy Rehfeldt does.
The one thing that didn't really change between the swapping out of songs was the idea of further developing the "Neo Noir" style I partially created The Twisted Kerchiefs to cultivate. The general makeup of a "Neo Noir" song as I currently define it is a track that combined elements of contemporary Jazz (of any era), and light touches of modern electronic styles such as Synth Fusion or the like. Hence the thinking behind giving a song that's mostly smooth Jazz number some synth sounds, a light smattering of synth bass arpeggios in the chorus', and record scratches.
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TRACK 8: FREE MAN [PISTON QUINTS REMIX]
ORIGINAL ARTIST: DECON THEED
REMIX ARTIST: PISTON QUINTS
I mentioned back on Track 5 that I'd asked Dio if there was any material she specifically wanted me to remix for this year; this is the second of her requests, a remix of my old joint Free Man.
Free Man was an early attempt at coming up with a "theme song" for our joint project E.Q., a series of stories set in a universe where music is no longer a free artform, and is instead used by the governing bodies of the world as a tool/weapon to control and subdue the masses. It's another of the many songs that I did under the Decon Theed name before I'd really settled on how I wanted that alias to sound- if anything, it actually sounds closer in style to the direction I wound up taking Visor Jack. Dio didn't just want a remix of Free Man, though; she specifically wanted a Piston Quints remix (as she has frequently mentioned that my Piston Quints stuff is often her favourite material of mine), and she wanted a remix that would fit with the E.Q. Christmas Special from back in 2013.
Her initial specifications for what she wanted out of the track had me a little daunted, but after hashing it out overnight and settling down to work the following morning, the track game together just fine. There's actually a sense of progression to the song that follows the last leg of the story along, from the point where Arpeggio flies home on the fighter jet up to the “You’re late.” (technically beyond that, too, wherein the hopelessly lovesick pair probably bonned the night/morning away). I'd be surprised at the speed with which the song came together- barely a couple of hours- but Piston Quints stuff, by nature of being much freer/experimental, allows me to go a little "looser" with song progression and arrangement. So it's more surprising when Piston Quints stuff DOESN'T come together quickly.
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TRACK 9: GUNSMITH [RIGOR MOTIONS' BERETTA BEAUTIES DUB]
ORIGINAL ARTIST: MELLO-MACHINE
REMIX ARTIST: RIGOR MOTIONS
Rigor Motions was another of the aliases I specifically wanted to make use of for 12 Remixes, because for a genre I incerely enjoy I certainly don't do much Jungle/Drum ' Bass.
I've had a lot of little challenges for myself over this album- an example being "don't use the Roland TR-909 Hi Hats more then maybe three times", 'cus I use them so bloody much as it is- and from the get go I had one in mind for the Rigor Motions remix; absolutely NO Amen Break. It's a great sample and I don't doubt I'll use it for a Jungle cut again somewhere down the line, but let's be real folks, it's used a lot. Like, A Lot™ a lot. You gotta give some love to other breakbeats sometimes, y'know? Another thing I really wanted to do with this one was to keep it mostly sedate, 'cus I like mellower jungle cuts as much as I do big boistrous break rollers that obliterate bassbins. I say "mostly", because some harder breaks and thick sub bass' still found their way in there. That said- and continuing with the theme of many firsts this album seems to've picked up- I've not done a Jungle cut using that typical-in-the-genre sub bass sound before, so it was a lot of fun getting to work that in. How effective it is I'll have to leaave up to you, because I lack a sound system decent enough to fully appreciate how deep it may or may not go.
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TRACK 10: HELLRAIZER [J-MACHINE's "REVENGE OF THE DICKHEAD DJs" REMIX]
ORIGINAL ARTIST: J1818
REMIX ARTIST: J-MACHine
I'm far more amused by that stupid intro then I have any right to be.
J-MACHine songs are always something I dread having to do, you'd be surprised to hear. It's not the genre that's the problem typically- it's all oldskool rave scene hardcore stuff, that's practically my element- but I tend to struggle to think up ways to make the songs more interesting or varied then your typical loop-heavy hardcore cuts from the early 90s (without going too far into experimental or freeform territory, that is), and partially because I'm filled with dread anytime I work with an alias that requires a large number of external samples, because a crash could rob me of my hard work at any point; I put off doing this remix as long as I could for those very reasons- and partially out of laziness, I admit. I'm not really sure why I was so worried about the former, though, because I went in to this one with some ideas in mind- I'd settled on the general flow of the song through it's various sections well in advance , and I was dead set on having that "mad scratching over looped breaks" intro section before I'd even settled on the intricacies of how I was going to do the rest of it. In spite of the anxiety, the end result is easily one of my favourite things I've ever done under the J-MACHine name; I really like the kinda "Progressive Hardcore" feel the song has going for it, and that it sounds like a mutant offspring of The Prodigy's Everybody In The Place [Fairground Remix] and Sonz Of A Loop Da Loop Era's Peace & Loveism is just icing on the cake for me.
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TRACK 11: SNOWFALL IN SHIBUYA [THIRD-MACHINE's 88 VARIETIES REMIX]
ORIGINAL ARTIST: Master Controller Featuring
REMIX ARTIST: third-MACHine
Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, that's the fourth time this album I opened a song with a vocal sample. I promise it's the last time.
This is the song I was the most indecisive about on the entire album, by far. Not in regards to how the song was going to flow; I was looking to employ the third-MACHine name to do something a little more "traditional" in the Acid vein with then previous outings under the name, and I'd even settled on minor details like the ways I was going to tweak the Acid bass pattern before I'd even started. No, the problem with this song is that I couldn't actually settle on WHAT song I was going to remix at any given point during the album. I know it was originally going to be Humble Bumble, then I was thinking about it being another song in the Moment Of Silence series, and I'm pretty sure I considered at least two or three other songs before finally settling on Snowfall In Shibuya at practically the last minute. That decision was mostly motivated by the fact I'd latched on to the idea of having a bass pattern that's more intricate for the first note of a four bar measure, then turns into a standard octave arpeggio for the remaining three- of which the bassline from the chorus sections of Snowfall In Shibuya was perfect for.
It is, by self admission, one of the looser adaptions on the album; the chords are roughly similar to the original track, and it has that nod to the bassline, but it goes in wildly different directions to the original. I kinda like that it plays a little faster and looser with the source material, though.
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TRACK 12: TEARS OF SERAPHIS [DECON THEED's "DRY YOUR EYES, LOVE, IT'S CHRISTMAS" REMIX]
ORIGINAL ARTIST: Arcade Child
REMIX ARTIST: Decon Theed
Throughout much of the album, I've said something to the effect of "I dreaded having to do this", and I fear that gives off the impression I didn't want to work on the album at all. That's not the case; when I say I dread having to work on certain things, it's usually the case that I'm worried about doing justice to a song or idea in a way that lines up with the "mental image" I have in my head, or I'm stressing about technological factors going in.
I bring this up in now because this was easily the song I dreaded doing the most. Why? Well...
For starters, Decon Theed songs are typically some of the hardest to do for me; there's a balance between more freeform/experimental elements and more loopy/techno-y ones that can be difficult to hit, similarly to J-MACHine ideas on how to make the songs interesting don't always come easily, and for some reason, I tend to restrict myself to mostly in program assets when doing DT stuff. Maybe partially that's down to the fact that Life Song was worked on around the time I really solidified what I wanted the alias to be, and because I intended selling that song from the get-go I went out of my way to avoid any potential copyright kerfuffle and it just kinda stuck, I don't know. But that's just Decon Theed in general; that's not counting the fact that the base song this is a remix of was incredibly sparse, barren, and generally left a lot of room for interpritation. I was stressing over not only how to make the track interesting, but how to keep it as true to the original as possible without going as minimal.
You're probably wondering why I bothered going through the trouble if I seemed so down on the idea, and the truth is this remix HAD to be on the album. The second I settled on the theme for this years album, I knew I wanted to remix this track in particular, and specifically as a Decon Theed song. Tears Of Seraphis, I'm pretty sure, is one of the single oldest pieces of music I've made that I still have access too- I'm fuzzy on the exact date, but it was no later then 2008 and no earlier then 2007. It's in terrible quality, it's simplistic not out of style but out of amateurism, and it's just in general not very good. But the sentimentality it carries for me, especially by this point, cannot be overstated. It's one of the songs where everything started for me. One of the songs that, if I didn't set out to do when I was younger, I'd never have wound up where I am now.
And waas it worth the trouble? I certainly think so. This version certainly plays fast and loose with what the original offered- which, as stated, wasn't much- but for all the trouble it gave me in preparation AND in practice (and oh man, did it give me no end of trouble working on it, believe me), the song really started coming alive as it came together. Although DT stuff normally isn't done from a 'soundtrack' mentality, I wound up taking this one in an almost "cinematic" direction, using the progression of the song to deliberately tell a story rather then just infer the idea of one. What that story is I couldn't tell you- whatever the original song was composed for, I have long forgotten (I don't even know what the fuck a Seraphis is)- but the "cinematic" progression felt like the most natural way for the song to evolve.
This project, like all 12 Days before it, was hard. Very hard, filled with stress and worry, and once again I've come through the other side not really knowing how the hell I managed to pull it off. It's not been hard on just me, either; on top of running three of her own Advent calendar projects this year, Dio also supplied all the song art for every alias (I know, she's mental). I'd be lying, though, if I said it wasn't worth it in the long run, with some solid material produced and an end result of an album that came out more or less exactly as I'd planned it to. Kinda. Sorta. If you squint.
You folks have a very merry Christmas, and I'll see you all on New Year~
~ Decon (24/12/15)