Frank’s mixes

Here’s my second upload: 05-10-06mix.mp3. File Size is 103.9mb and was encoded at 192kpbs, Runtime is 1:15:36.

Frank McGahon: 05-10-06mix

This mix was recorded around the same time as the one below but has a slightly different feel, starting with a slightly slower tempo and with a bit more of an organic feel, and a little Balearic influence. It starts off with Began Cekic’s cover version of a Paradise Garage fave, The Police’s Voices Inside My Head. The original is a great tune and was given an extended edit by Dj Harvey back in the mid-1990s for use at his late night/early morning Ruling sessions at the Ministry of Sound. But, I like the feel of this version, with added funk and effects. Next track is Kenny Dope’s re-rub of Manzel’s breakbeat classic, Space Funk. The mix in and out of this this is a little bit rough (but bear with me, it gets better!). Next track sticks with the Space-Jazz-Funk theme, Carl Craig’s rework of Donald Byrd’s Think Twice. It’s not really a straight cover, but is instead based on a breakdown section in the midde. Great driving chord changes. Next track also has some chord-change action and has a nice Jazz-Funk/Boogie flavour, Ski Oakenful’s remix of Incognito. Starts off broken and ends up 4-4 which leads to Kenny Dope’s stripped down dub of Roy Ayers’ Holiday. Normally, I’m not overly keen on contemporary mixes of old tunes, especially so when they mainly consist of quantizing the original record and applying a standard issue 4-4 Kickdrum-based house beat. This is a little different, for starters the old track is not a familiar classic, it was originally written by Ayers to back the campaign for the national holiday now known as Martin Luther King day. This was Roy Ayers’ equivalent to Stevie Wonder’s Happy Birthday. But it never got released. Ayers has a huge back catalogue of material, to all of which he retained full rights, that for some reason or other he chose not to release at the time. Some of this is being released under the Virgin Ubiquity series by BBE records. The original of Holiday is on Virgin Ubiquity 2 and it is a laidback groove, in the vein of Everybody Loves the Sunshine or Ramp’s Daylight, around 80 bpm in tempo. For this mix, Kenny Dope takes a section of the female vocal, slowed it down and layers a spare groove, little more than bass and percussive 4-4 pattern at twice the tempo of the vocal. This slow-ish sounding vocal stretched over gives a kind of ethereal feel. Which suggested the classic broken King Britt I:Cube remix from 2000. This leads into the balearic-tinged section. The next three tracks all feature some female spoken vocals (Italian, Portuguese and Spanish respectively) and, to me, evoke the original Ibiza vibe, concluding with the classic Sueno Latino. Next is a change with some straight up, Jazz-Soul style 4-4 from Reel People. Leading into MAW’s Razzamatazz-referencing cut for the original female singer on Quincy Jones’ 1980 track, Patti Austin. Breaking up the beat again with some 2005-era Afro-Beat featuring Fela’s original drummer Tony Allen and wrapping up with the organic feel of Alice Russell’s appropriately named All Over.

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