The Preacher

Hi all,

It's been another busy old month in the life and Andy, and as such, the life of Colatron has taken a back seat. Silly amounts of work and account managing large designer retail outlets (they give me a nervous breakdown twice a month), amazingly late nights on a school night meeting and greeting new friends, losing old ones, all amounts to a tired Andy (I'm sleeping a minimum 12 hours per day on a weekend).

As a result, my musical output has dropped considerably this month plus the ideas well had dried up.

But after the feedback I received on Ms. Nelly's Nightmare, it dawned on me how much I miss the old skool sound. I regularly listen to my old mix tapes anyway and comilation CDs, but it has been superceded by mash-up mixes and jangly acoustic singer-songwriters as of late.

So for inspiration, I dug deep in to my old tapes. Looking for anything with a beat I could use. This proved to be very successful, but those mashes aren't quite ready yet, so keep 'em peeled in the forthcoming weeks. There are some really old skool dark tracks coming up.

But this one retains the spirit of the old skool, reminding me of the darkcore days of '93-'95. I had a cool 'pella that Lee Spoons of 10000 Spoons fame sorted me out, of Bloc Party's 'The Prayer'. A wicked band I've seen a couple of times now, probably one of the only bands from the last 3 years or so I've actually taken notice of, daring to be a little different to the moppy haired, skinny jeans wearing teenage angst that seems to be the fad at the mo.

The track has a cool sub-drum n' bass vibe, which Lee Spoons demonstrated so abley on his amazing "The Man Don't Give Two Forks" mix, so I wanted to have a go. Now anyone who has tried mashing D'n'B will tell you, it's a nightmare finding the right beat, but I think I lucked out on my first go.

I was in the car the start of this week, listening to the awesome Essential Mix that UNKLE did for Radio 1 years ago, which has the awesome ending of Leftfield's "Phat Planet" mixed with the Doors "The End" (if anyone has a 'pella of the Doors, I'm begging ya for it!) and the idea struck me that maybe Phat Planet would work with The Prayer; I love it's throbbing bass and the track was the backing to one of my fave adverts ever - the Jonathon Glazer-directed Guiness ad featuring the surfers and the crashing waves that become black horses.

One quick search later and I lucked out even more finding a brilliant d'n'b remix of the original, which was just obviously the perfect fit. To spice things up, I thought, "what if I had some actually prayer on the track?". This proved a little harder, as finding a decent recording of people in prayer is nigh on impossible, even more so finding a none guitar based version of the Lords Prayer! Still, a few sermons downloaded, a bit of church congregation and some aramaic preaching later, and I had the samples I wanted.

I did very little to the tracks involved in terms of sound effects apart from the odd bit of reverb here and there and a little noise reduction, but the Bloc Party 'pella did need a lot of pitching up to fit in key.

So here it is, my first mash to technically feature the 'vs. Christianity' moniker, although I've dropped this for fear of appearing pretentious :D

The Preacher

Leftfield vs. Bloc Party
(Phat Planet (Lethal & Imaginary Forces Rmx) vs. the Prayer)



Download page here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?62jmyit3lxp

Last resort ZShare link here:
http://www.zshare.net/audio/391655225104b1/