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Sunday, 16 December 2007

Illegal No-Ones

It's funny how things work out. This is now the second track I've made pitching the wonderful, beautiful and talented Alicia Keys against the 90s legend Ian Brown (the first being a personal fave of mine, "U F.E.A.R. My Name" somewhere down below on this page), but it wasn't meant to be this way...

I started off playing with this instrumental last week (BEEEEEEG shout out to my mate Fag for the heads up on the instrumental) and thought I had the most fantastic match ever, in dropping Christina's "Hurt" over the top. The intro worked beautifully, the various breathey vocal parts dropping in to place wonderfully against the impending danger of the string stabs. I'd even got the artwork all planned in my head. It was to be, the perfect track. But I just couldn't get the chorus to fit. It was too fast, too loud, too much like hard work! Gutted, but not put off, I started thinking, divas and big voices. I pitched every 'pella I had of every big, sweet souful voice against the track, but nothing quite fitted. At one point, I had 5 'pellas in the project in Acid. I even tried to weave the vocals in and out of each other to create a battle of the vocals. But it didn't feel right.

Then I went back to one of my fave vocals in Aaliyah's "Try Again" and with a bit of tweaking, it worked brilliantly. In fact, you'll find it down below as a bonus treat; but I always try to do something new and I'd already used this vocal in "U R Still A Dudu" which I am happy with, and so I wanted to try something new.

Alicia Key's "No-One " has been in my top ten tracks of the last few weeks, and I had been deperate to do something with it, searching high and low for somthing suitable. I'd even begged my usual sources for an instrumental of John Lennon's "Instant Karma" as it was around the right BPM - you'd be amazed how hard it is to find a non-hip-hop/soul track at around 89.9bpm, and I was determined not to use the Fugees with this vocal.

Anyway, in desperation, I tried the Alicia vocal against the Ian Brown track, thinking how ironic it would be if it worked and I ended up with another chilled out Alicia boot. Of course, it worked!
There's no beats in this one so it more likely to head for your chill-out compilations, or be used in a breakdown during a set (I arsed around in Ableton last night for hours creating my own beats but nothing really floated my boat), but I love the cinematic feel to it. And in the end, I managed to drop a sample from Try Again throughout the track, AND get some snippets of Christina in there to finish with, so it all ended up good in the hood.

I gotta get me some tickets for Alicia next Easter at the NIA....I love this girl so much....

Illegal No-Ones

Ian Brown vs. Alicia Keys (feat. Christina Aguilera)
(Illegal Attacks (Orchestral Mix) vs. No-One)



Download Page Here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?9wxxrbmqxnm

Last Resort ZShare Link Here:
http://www.zshare.net/audio/56797784da34cf/



And here is the bonus track, the simple A+B track

Try Illegal Attacks

Ian Brown vs. Aaliyah
(Illegal Attacks (Orchestral Mix) vs. Try Again)

Download Page Here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?5fmeh9znix3

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