Archive for August, 2007
New music from a new collaboration: Ruff Loaderz
A few weeks ago, I received a DJ promo copy of a hot new track titled Let It Go. The artist, Ruff Loaderz, wasn’t familiar to me, but the track really stood out, and I was anxious to learn more about who was behind it.
As it turns out, it’s a pretty exciting collaboration between two very talented artist/producers: Julian Napolitano, and the fabulous Sheryl Deane.
Julian Napolitano is one-third of Soul Seekerz, the UK-based production team responsible for some very hot remixes of Dannii Minogue, Bananarama, Sugababes, and many others, as well as some great original music. Napolitano has a number of named efforts, including JDS, One Hit Wonders, and Perpetual Motion, so Ruff Loaderz is merely his latest alias.
Sheryl Deane is the incredible voice behind (among others) the extremely strong and popular track from The Thrillseekers, Synaesthesia, which keeps popping-up on playlists (including mine) since it was first released in 2000.
As Ruff Loaderz, the duo was unsigned until recently; Napolitano is working with Positiva Records out of the UK to get the tracks into the hands of music buyers, so be looking for availability of the track on major download sites (hopefully soon).
I had the opportunity to sample some additional Ruff Loaderz tracks, and one in particular, Fever, you can expect to hear popping-up in my sets soon too… It’s a very powerful, high-emotion track.
In any case, I suspect we’ll be hearing more from the Napolitano/Deane team over time.
Add comment August 20, 2007
Web site updated
Just posted tonight some updates to my regular web site at http://www.wesleyspengler.com. They include:
- Posting the latest Top 25 Dance Chart (up from Top 15!).
- Retiring my gig calendar from MySpace, and posting a more extensive on the site itself.
- Making a slight design tweak.
- Fiddling with some other content.
I hope you have a chance to check it out if you haven’t already.
Crank-up the volume… Wes.
P.S. A “regular” blog posting is coming this weekend; work demands have kept me from having the time to finish-up the one I’m working on.
Add comment August 18, 2007
Cool new track
I just wrote the title of this post, and am sitting here thinking to myself, “How many times will I be using the title ‘cool new track’ for a blog posting?” The answer is probably “often” since I frequently get excited by stand-out new tracks when I receive new DJ promos or buy a batch of tracks from Beatport, and today is no exception.
The track in question is I Need a Miracle from Dutch production trio KLM Music, and features the vocals of Coco Star. (Not to be confused with Cascada’s recent song of the almost-same-name, (I Need a) Miracle.)
Coco and this song go back a little ways, as she’s recorded it twice before, once with producer Victor Imbres, and again with producer Mathew Roberts, with it getting some attention in 1997. Two years later, it received some renewed PR work from the record label, and surfaced again on playlists. It was also used in a “vs.” mash-up by DJ Vimto.
How or why KLM decided to give this song yet another go, with Coco on vocals no less, is sort of beyond me (if this song was going to be a breakthrough international mega-hit, that likely would have happened already), but the net result is pretty catchy I have to say. Star’s vocals are particularly engaging, and I can’t quite put my finger on why, aside from her pronunciation and intonations. KLM have put a polished production spin on the song that meshes quite nicely with Star’s competent and energetic vocal, creating a good “package” that just plain works.
I’ve spun the song several times already, and the response has been positive. It’ll be interesting to see how it develops from here.
Crank-up the volume… Wes.
2 comments August 9, 2007
Epic albums revisited
There is no question that digital downloading (legal and otherwise) has refocused and recomposed the music industry in a lot of ways—most of which are still very much being figured out as we speak. But one thing that others have written about is the loss of importance of the “long play” album. Music has become very track-centric (single-centric), and with the iPod and its ilk, we’re all living in the “shuffle” generation. Maybe that’s a good thing, in that only the best tracks are rewarded with success, and the all-too-common occurrence of an album with one or two strong tracks and the balance being total junk is no longer embraced by default. I’d like to think it’s causing artists and labels to “up” their game a bit (or if it’s not, it should).
Of course, that sort of glosses-over the fact that dance music has always been single-centric. Since the modern dance music scene emerged in the 80s, it’s been about 12″ maxi-singles, EPs and compilations, and that continues through to today (even if the distribution medium is changing to digital).
That doesn’t keep me from thinking back a good 20 years or so to what probably was the height of what I’d refer to as “epic albums.” I’m sure we can all think of examples, but these are the albums that aren’t merely a collection of individual songs, but a work in-whole that is crafted carefully to tell a story end-to-end, or to have some sort of musical continuity, in many cases with the songs flowing into one another a la dance music compilations (even though the examples I’m thinking of are not dance).
The two that come to my mind are Franky Goes to Hollywood’s Welcome to the Pleasuredome, the singular source of every hit from the group, and the classic Pink Floyd album The Wall, which for many people has no equal. Both of these albums represent the very best (in my opinion) of vinyl albums specifically, but “epic albums” in general. They were recorded, engineered and the tracks were arranged to work perfectly in the vinyl medium. I have neither of these on CD (only vinyl), so I have no idea how well they did (or didn’t) translate to CD. But I do have very fond memories of dropping the needle at the beginning of a side, and simply listening, end-to-end, until it was time to flip it over, never wanting once to skip a track. When was the last time this happened to you? (Yeah, it had been awhile for me too.)
I suppose that’s why I found it so incredibly refreshing when I finally bought a copy of the first long-form album from UK-based trance team Above & Beyond. This trio of chronically underfed guys, Jonathan “Jono” Grant, Tony McGuinness, and Paavo Siljamäki, crank-out some pretty unbelievable original tracks and remixes, and as house-focused as I am personally, it’s hard to resist their music (especially the more “clubby” mixes).
Tri-State is the name of the album I’m talking about, and I strongly recommend it. Anyone who’s attended any of my sets will immediately recognize several of the tracks, but this blog posting isn’t about the tracks… It’s about the fact that Grant, McGuinness and Siljamäki have artfully chosen the order of the tracks, and blended them together in such a way as to evoke emotion and provide an immersive listening experience of the type I’ve not really seen (well, heard) in two decades.
Yes, you can listen to the tracks if you have your iPod on shuffle, but you’re really missing out if you don’t listen to the whole thing, in the prescribed order, using a gapless playback device (like newer iPods). Just think of the album as one, great big, long, single track, and you’ll be treated to a good 45 minutes or so of eargasmic electronica—some female vocal, some male vocal, some non-vocal—that creatively weaves in and out of housey grooves to ethereal trance to sounds that, frankly, border on new age.
Pardon my gushing, but it’s a phenomenal piece of work, and I hope it’s not the last release of its type for Above & Beyond (who are better known, perhaps, for their Anjunabeats compilation releases, which are also serviceable trance releases, but definitely a different animal than this album).
I’d suggest the physical CD product (which you can get on Amazon.com, etc.) so you can ensure you get the tracks as they were intended to be heard (including the flow into one another), but it’s also available digitally from a number of the usual suspects. (See my site for links.)
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Crank-up the volume… Wes.
[DISCLOSURE: Clicking the Beatport or iTunes banners on my web site generates a small commission to me if you make a purchase, but I have no other vested interest in this review.]
4 comments August 6, 2007
A pleasant surprise: Sally Jaxx
I was very pleased today to receive a nice e-mail from singer Sally Jaxx. Sally, who hails from the UK, is the vocalist behind the dance cover of the Dolly Parton song 9 to 5 that I’ve blogged about before here and here.
Sally’s clearly a class act, because she took my criticisms of the song in stride, addressing some of the issues I’d brought-up in my blog posts in the process.
And as I told her in my e-mail reply, cover songs are tricky. If you stay faithful to the original, as she did in her version with Fabulous DJs, you create interest and immediate identification among people who know the original version. If you stray too far from the mark, you risk people having reactions like, “You ruined my favorite song!!” So I fully appreciate the challenge that Sally Jaxx and others are faced with.
You also have record labels and producers telling you what they want, and artists don’t always have the sort of influence on direction that you think they would.
I also told Sally that despite my initial feelings about the song, it’s been very well received by my audiences, and I continue to make it a part of my sets. This proves once again that these things are subjective, and that what matters is what the people on the dance floor respond to. (I also want to note for the record that I’ve since warmed-up to the track!)
Sally also set me right on a few items. For starters, her last name is “Jaxx” not “Jacks” as the song was credited on my promotional copy.
Secondly, in one of my blog posts, I was confused about the song credits for 9 to 5. As it turns out, Sally originally recorded the song with New Emotion, targeting the gay dance audience primarily. When it was picked-up by a small UK label, they had a reasonable amount of success with it, and took it as far as they could. Ministry of Sound and Sporting Riff Raff Records out of the UK decided they’d like to take the track a bit farther, going back into the studio with Sally to cut another version, which was done under the name “Fabulous DJs” as I’d mentioned before.
So, that explains the artist ID confusion; there are two separate versions, both of which feature Sally’s vocals.
Sally also let me know that Fabulous DJs (I stand by my comment that they could have come-up with a more compelling name!) are the production team of Daz Sampson and Paul Keenan. (Daz is also 1/2 of the Riff Raff Records label.) The pair is also known together as Uniting Nations, and have had a fair amount of success in the dance music scene, individually, together, and as part of other creative teams. As someone who likes to know the people behind the sometimes goofy artist names, it was good to uncover the guys who put this track together.
A public “thank you” to Sally Jaxx for taking the time to get me up to speed. I look forward to hearing more from her in the future.
Crank-up the volume… Wes.
Add comment August 3, 2007
