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 I regularly listen to my old mix tapes anyway and comilation CDs, but it has been superceded by mash-up mixes and jangly acoustic singer-songwriters as of late.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/

Ms. Nelly's Nightmare

Well, not one to jump on the bandwagon, I've been noticing a little bit of a resurgence in the "old skool" over at GYBO recently, thanks to the genius of the NME labelling anything in skinny jeans and day-glo t-shirts as "Nu Rave". What an awful label for anything! You can always rely on the old NME to go down the boozer on a quiet day, chuck a few cut-out random bits of paper with various adjectives written on in a cap and pull out the next big style they're going to push....

Anyway, as mentioned, there has been a crest of excellent boots recently making the most of the musical legacy that I grew up on and got me in to music in the first place. The old skool. I can stil remember the excitement of heading in to the city centre on a Saturday to the legendary Depot, or Circle Records to pick up the latest Fantazia flyers, Dreamscape, Perception...etc. The legendary Institute was at it's peak (I ironically live around the corner from there now, with it's god awful student nights), the Hummingbird was sharing debut nights with Nirvana, alongside the likes of Ratty, Ratpack, Ellis Dee....etc. (I'll never forgive me friend Rachel's dad (and also my mum's ex-neighbour) Paul for closing the place down! As nice a bloke as he was...). My first tapes.... the awesome Top Buzz with MC Mad P (still my fave to this day), the legendary New Years Eve parties, The Book of Love, Micky Finn, Tribal Gathering (my first festival all those years back). Aaaahh.....the best music ever. Period.

So the mighty Dunproofin has chucked out a couple, notably his excellent Felix boot with the Gossip

http://dunproofin.blogspot.com/

and a cheeky Slipmatt boot (one of my fave moments from Helter Skelter was when Ellis Dee dropped that tune)

And the brilliant 10000 Spoons knocked out the (I wish I'd thought of it myself) Liquid Killers

http://10000spoons.blogspot.com/

featuring one of the all-time greats, Liquid's "Sweet Harmony".

I had the itch - what to mash. I literally had 100s of tracks to choose from. Do I go with Italian Piano, raging breakbeat, darkcore d'n'b? I settled for an old skool classic, the infamous 4Hero's "Mr. Kirk's Nightmare" with it's apocalyptic warning of ectasy overdose. One drop in of a vocal later (yep, another Nelly F boot!), and the track wrote itself (with a little tweaking of bpm). I didn't even add that many effects, it just seemed to fit together so well (there is a little bit of filter on the bass and vocal toward the end).

And the artwork wrote itself too. Hehe

A simple track with a heavy vibe. To be included on my forthcoming proper attempt at a full-length mix. Pull on your white gloves, pass round the Swan Vestas and overdose on Vicks. 'Ave it!

Ms. Nelly's Nightmare

4Hero vs. Nelly Furtado
(Mr. Kirk's Nightmare vs. Say It Right)

Download page here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?9uvmsnmrywn

Last resort ZShare link here:

http://www.zshare.net/audio/34976006c017e2/

No Thrills Attached

Evening all.

Well it's been hard to resist uploading this one since it's inception about 2 weeks ago, but a promise is a promise is a guarantee with Andy. Yep - an exclusive it was made as and an exclusive it remained until now when it is available for all.

This one had a bit of background to it. It came about as a result of a pure fluke. I have a 12 CD multichanger in the car (my pride and joy!) and I generally go through the full 12 every week with the amount of driving I tend to do. Anyway, a few weeks back, I was struggling to think of CDs I really wanted to hear and was going through the CD cabinet that hasn't been opened in like 12 months or something. In there, I saw the fourth Prodigy album, "Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned". Now I was a huge Prodigy fan back in the day, and my collection of Prodigy singles is my pride and joy. Admittedly though, the last few years has seen them change their direction, which is great, but I was so not keen on the last few tracks coming out. Anyway, I bought the album eons ago, and I think I've listened to it maybe twice. Hmmm....time to give it another chance. Well, the singles from the album still do it for me, but I thought the rest of the album was ok but nothing amazing. But then track 11 kicked in. "The Way It Is". I'd forgotten all about it. From the first few bars, I recognised the Thriller bassline, twisted out of recognition. The angular beats and synth distorting the bassline out of recognition, before kicking back in. I was smitten straight away with the track, and pretty much there and then I thought, I gotta make a Michael Jackson mash with this.

An hour or two later after getting in, and with very little joy in finding a Thriller 'pella, I experimented with the Jacko 'pellas I did have (about 7 or 8). A drag and drop later, and Bad was cued up, virtually fitting like a dream straight away, with very little tempo change required.

But strange things happen and somehow this ended up sitting on the desktop for some time, and my enthusiasm waning, I moved on to experiment with other things (along with Killa Katie - see below).

But then 2 weeks or so later, after I'd put this to the back of my mind, Scott Johnson of the awesome Ramdom Thoughts podcast dropped me a line asking if I had time, to put together an exclusive for the show. I was honoured! Made me feel I was finally starting to get somewhere. But what track to make? Well, with a half finsished tune sitting there, I revisited it. I chopped up the vocal a little, and moved it around to try and vary it up, but something was missing.

In the meantime, I was pratting around looking for Thriller pictures on t'interweb to make the cover (a little prematurely, admittedly) - I can't tell you how many times I watched that Thriller video whilst working on this project, but I'll never get tired of it. Not getting much joy with decent pics, I decided to get on SLSK to see what I could find Thriller related. Well, what a treat. The original demo acapella of the Vincent Price rap from Thriller with the missing second verse!

Immediately, I was back on track with this - I was in love with the idea of getting this done properly and finished. The Vincent vocal begins with a cool little snippet of producer getting the show on the road, and intros from Michael and Vincent. Brill. Chop those up and drop them around the place a bit. The silky smooth, legendary voice of Vincent fitted so well over those jagged beats it was a no brainer. A few samples of the obligatory Michael "Wooos" and "Shamone" later, with some widdly sweeping phase on the vocals and some of the beats and there it was. I don't know what it is but I can't stop listening to this track.

Hell, I even came up with a decent title for it for once.

I sent it to Scott and he gave me such great feedback, featuring it on the excellent show #70 as an exclusive. It was so hard to not post this early though, that's how proud of it I am.

So for whacking a random CD I hadn't really thought of in to my car, I've come up with probably my 2nd fave track I've made (Killa Katie is still my fave....download it if you haven't already!) and I hope a danceloor filler/thriller

Big thanks to Scott, for making me pull my finger out and do this properly. And also, big thanks to John Sakamoto of The Star in Toronto for making my week by including Killa Katie in his anti-hit list top 10 - finally, the recognition I craved! check out the mini-review at

http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/249256

Fingers crossed, a lot more material heading this way soon - keep 'em peeled

No Thrills Attached

The Prodigy vs. Michael Jackson vs. Vincent Price
(The Way It Is vs. Bad vs. Thriller)



Download page here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?9gvj0tmm1um

And if all else fails, get your thrills here:
http://www.zshare.net/audio/3412183b2f5bd9/

Killa Katie

Another busy week in terms of production from me - fortunately I've had a lovely lazy week off from the office and as such have managed to complete a couple of the 5 or 6 projects that have been sat on my PC for a while now.

The first of which I can't tell you too much about, as it's an exclusive track I created for Scott Johnson over at the excellent Ramdom Thoughts podcast which will be played on show #70 next weekend (24th August), and I will then put up for download on the 31st. All I will say is that it's some dark electro funk from a well known band, spliced with some powerful pop, and I love it. Seriously, if you get chance (and you should check him out anyway as his shows are awesome) head over to

http://www.ramdomthoughts.co.uk/

and check it out.

The second track I've bashed out this week is this, and I have to say, I'm am STOKED with it.

I've been long toying with the idea of doing a Kate Nash track ever since I first heard Foundations. For me it's in the top 5 tunes released this year so far, with it's simple 4 chords, catchy handclap beat and uplifting piano. And of course, it's Mockney-esque pronunciation of the words Bitter and Fitter (Harrow's a bit far from the East End me thinks). But as far as I am aware, no-one else has produced anything with her vocals on the scene, so the dilemma was, where to grab the 'pella?

Well, why beat around the bush. I made me own instead on Audition! It didn't come out too badly at all on the verse parts, although the chorus seemed to mixed in with the piano riff, and as such a few artifacts remain, but I like their sound so I won't quibble.

So what to mix it with? Well, it was obvious to me that the rhythm follows a simple skipping drum n' bass-esque pattern. Of course, this is another genre I grew up on in the 90s so I fortunately have a large collection of d'n'b tracks to choose from. Saying that, I tried quite a few out agains the vocal but I found the end results a little too dark. By coincidence though, I'd got hold of the awesome Killa Kella debut album the other day - "The Permanent Marker". I've been listening to quite a bit of human beatbox lately (since making the Deceptikon/Lily Allen boot earlier this year!), and this chap really is the business

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killa_Kela

And so I found the perfect track with a d'n'b rhythm, but with the added bonus of it being performed live by a human.

One last element needed was the addition of some vocals fom the Streets eponymous "Don't Mug Yourself". Not only does this create a bit of a dynamic tension between Kate and Mike ("Oi oi oi"), but it almosts fits together as a bit of narrative story, Kate moaning about the night before, with Mike talking to his mate about the night before too. Or I could be making that bit up, hehe, but either way it's a battle of the Mockneys. With some bass rumbling filters applied in the last few bars.

Anyway, this track is dedicated to my lovely friend Katie - she's always been a big Streets fan, and is partial to the odd bit of beatbox too, so I've named it after her, and made her the cover star too. Hope you enjoy it hon.

Killa Katie

Killa Kela vs. Kate Nash vs. the Streets
Crop Circles (Splinter remix) vs. Foundations vs. Don't Mug Yourself)



Download page here
http://www.mediafire.com/?dbvi5iyxx3o

And if all else fails - give it a shot here
http://www.zshare.net/audio/3199620252e5da/

U F.E.A.R. My Name

This is sheer lunacy. I've been awake now for nigh on 24 hours, I've worked a 10 hour day, I've been to the pub and got drunk, I'm sure it was dark when I got in, but here I am still awake making mash-up.

I got in from the pub tonight (or is it yesterday) at about 10:45pm and was straight on my PC to send Lee Spoons of 10000 Spoons fame an instrumental of Ian Brown's classic F.E.A.R., one of the best tracks of the last 10 years. Howver, on searching my PC I realised I only had the UNKLE remix of it. Not being one to let people down, I had a go at making my own instrumental from a B-Side version of the song from the single, which amazingly came out really well.

After sending both versions to Lee, I was suddenly gripped with this silly desire to use the track straight away, and so an acapella of the irresistable Alicia Keys popped straight in to my booze-addled head. A little drag and drop later and it fitted nigh on perfectly, and was in key! Well, that was it. I set to creating this track I now present to you. However, the tempo kept changing throughout the vocal in relation to the instrumental. Not a problem he thinks setting to chopping it up. 3 hours later, I suddenly get the bright idea to add the UNKLE remix too, to make it in to an epic soundscape of ambient strings descending in to pulse-racing techno breakbeat. 1 hour later and he's got the tracks all cued up, with an added snippet of Ian Brown vocal kindly supplied by Lee, and rendered ready to add the effects in Audition. A bit of echo and reverb on the vocals I snipped a bit too close, and here is the final result. I couldn't head to bed, as this has to be my fave track I've made so far, if only because I love the Ian Brown track so much. 7 hours of hard work for this. I could have made another 5 minutes for this track but I really am shattered, and I have to be at a party tomorrow night.

As I look out the living room window, I see blue skies; my head is pounding and heavy, I have the shakes and a feel exhausted, but it's all worth it for this one track. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

U F.E.A.R. My Name

Ian Brown vs. Alicia Keys vs. UNKLE
(F.E.A.R. vs. U Don't Know My Name vs. F.E.A.R. (UNKLE remix))



MP3 Here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?ebf01ojblyr




Be sure to check out the Ramdom Thoughts podcast nest weekend for show #68. There will be an exclusive Bobby Martini full length mix showcased which won't be available for download until the 10th August. Hear it there first, it's going to be big

http://http//ramdom.wordpress.com/

Black Eyed Eric (Colatron Wants Your Soul)

Well, as the lyrics go, "It's been a long time"

What a month July has been. Highs and lows....lots of lows. Stag parties, weddings, drinking, assaults with a piece of salmon, torrential flooding, assaults on hotel doors with water colour paintings, more drinking, work, work, work, and unfortunately, a death. It's been one long month, and the amount of work I have been doing recently has been ridiculous, hence the lack of updates so many apologies to my listeners.

This track has been sat on my desktop for around a month now and finding the time to actually concentrate and finish it off properly has been nigh on impossible but last night I knuckled down and worked through the night to get it out

Been playing around with the Eric B & Rakim vocal for ages and couldn't find anything to match it to, and then one day after listening to the mighty Loo & Placido it clicked. Now this ain't no "Black Beatles" - to try and top that would be foolhardy, but I am pleased with the outcome. Think party choon. Think added bass. Think Colatron

I've been constructing the songs in Acid Pro still, but have been using Adobe Audition lately to add the effects and filters, and I think the results are much better. That plus my new bass shaking speakers (17W woofer in my tiny flat? You gotta feel for the neighbours) for the PC just made me want to add the additional bass drum to certain sections of the instrumental. Apologies if it drowns out your speakers, but it sounds perfect on mine.

A few random samples from The Running Man (this was originally gonna be a tribute to Damon Killian, top villain with all the best lines in the classic Arnie movie), a smooth vocal from Lil' Flip straight from Beyonce's "Naughty Girl", a snippet of InDeep's "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life" and a bizarre ending top off the track.

The ending is my little apology to all my friends from MySpace and Facebook that I've neglected the last 4 weeks. I decided to give them a little Auto Attendant-style message straight from Colatron Inc. (a bit of an in-joke for those in the know - me working in Telecoms) explaining that they may not get through to me. I think it works and I'll probably end up using it for something else too such as a promo.

Anyhow, enough rant, on with the track:-

Black Eyed Eric (Colatron Wants Your Soul)

Black Eyed Peas vs. Eric B & Rakim
(Let's Get Retarded vs. I Know You Got Soul)



MP3 Here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?8hxfbj3wbhm

Be warned - it does chew up the bass!

Dedicated to Chris - I know you had soul

Writer's Block

The clue's in the title!

Once again, been a busy boy at work this week, and so my creative process has been somewhat thrown, to the point where I have what some may call "Writer's Block". Which ironically is the name of the track that this is based on.

I've been in the doldrums creatively this week, to the point where I had no ideas for tunes or artwork, or even to go back to the projects I have on the go currently.

I hate going back over ground already trod, but when I finally found an instrumental I was enthusiastic to use, only one track was in my head to match it - Depeche Mode's 'Enjoy the Silence'. I'd already made a track using the 'pella, posted down below, but using it with this one gives the vocal a new feeling, almost puts me in mind of old school Balearic guitar beat bliss. I couldn't even think of a decent title though!

That said, I've had a game and a half pitching the vocals on this - I hope I've got it right, it sounds good to my ear, but it could be slightly out - it needs fresh ears to confirm.

I've also gotten completely bored of my one usual trick of adding a wee bit of stereo-echo to everything, so I've been playing with the FX in Audition instead, which pleasantly surprised me as being really good and very easy to use! Still took me ages to decide on something suitable to this though.

Something was missing though - a quick flick through the obligatory rap 'pellas later and Skee-Lo was perfect.

Here's the final product. Even had a play with the usual colatron-style graphics! Not my fave piece of work, but it's got the creativity flowing again hopefully - in fact, I've made my own instrumental for my next project, which if I can get the right vocal to fit, could be awesome...roll on next weekend...

Writer's Block

Just Jack vs. Depeche Mode vs. Skee Lo
(Writer's Block vs. Enjoy the Silence vs. I Wish)

MP3 Here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?3whyxzbmmhp

U R Still A Dudu

Just time folks before I head to bed, to post another tune for the weekend, and IMHO it's a perfect tune to end the weekend with, a chilled out slice of r n' b.

I've been toying around all weekend with a few new instrumentals and 'pellas sitting on my PC and at this present moment in time I have about 5 or 6 projects on the go, via Acid Pro. But as always, I blew all of them out as this one came to mind. It's so annoying, I have certain mixes I want to finish but they always seem to get pushed aside as soon as something else fits as a result of playing about.

Anyhow, this one took me maybe 2 and a half hours from getting in from the pub in Moseley - it's semi-inspired by the stereo in the top boozer "The Fighting Cocks" (not the best name for a pub, I admit) where every track they played tonight was so blissfully chilled out, I had to have a go at making a weekend comedown track.

So straight away, I know where I'm headed for - an old CD I picked up about 8 years ago whilst at Uni - Smokedown, this awesome chilled out leftfield compilation I picked up back when I was spending £50 a week minimum on CDs (ironically when I had less money than now) featuring some real way out there electronica. One track jumped out straight away as having a decent easy beat to match a vocal to - Kushti's "U R Still Ahead" - it has a nice mellow vibe too (goes without saying, there's at least another 4 or 5 tracks on there that will be making it on to Acid at some point).

But what vocal to mash it with? Well, from my previous post for "Sometimes I Smile", I was determined to get a foreign language 'pella in the mix, and Tarkan's "Dudu" was top of my list. Tarkan for those who don't know was the dude who came up with the orginal version of Holly Valance's "Kiss Kiss" - a top top track, considering it's pop and I normally hate pop (probably something to do with Holly being cute, the reason I like it :D) - read more about him here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarkan

He really is a talented guy, and considering I don't understand Turkish, I can still appreciate a great vocal when I hear it.

But the track needed something else....the silky smooth vocals of the much missed Aaliyah. Now there was a talented girl who left us in tragic circumstances. Still, she left a great legacy of records (and they are ALWAYS played on Freeview channel 'The Hits' which is a good thing) and this was possibly my fave of them all.

Chuck in a subtle sample (you'll probably never hear it, it's that low in the mix) and a hint of my next track I'm working on (featuring Japanese pop megastar Otsuka Ai) and you have a lovely blissed out track, perfect for a sunny summer's day (let's hope it gets rid of this infernal rain here in the UK).

By the way, I normally put a bit of thought in to the covers for my tracks, trying to relate them to the music, no matter how tenuous the link, but in this case, I went for an image I Photoshopped yesterday for my Facebook profile that I just love (and not in a vain way!) - it's my best bit o' image manipulation yet, so I apologise to those who may like to find a meaning in my covers. And apologies for the crap name for this track too, but I'm half cut, and it's getting late, and one of out top clients is in the office in 7 hours so I should really think about bed.

I'll leave it with ya!

U R Still A Dudu

Kushti vs. Tarkan vs. Aaliyah
(U R Still Ahead vs. Dudu vs. Try Again)



MP3 Here
http://www.mediafire.com/?cjr1ttmpyyt

Perfect Slow Music

The track that very nearly wasn't...

This one caused me a just a few legends of GYBO a few headaches! It's been a hell of a week, what with the shocking situation of hero wrestler Chris Benoit apparently slaughtering his family and then committing suicide (this guy was a hero of mine...I'm still struggling to get my head around it), the crazy terrorist attacks in the UK, the company I work for virtually doubling in size over night (and yet the work tripled....how does that work?), a hectic stag weekend down in rainy Cornwall, Newquay (more of which later), the smoking ban coming in in England, a blinding gig by The Hours in Leicester on Tuesday followed by some celebrity stalking of the man known as Serge from Kasabian (never did get that photo...dang-it), and my good friend Kirsty's 21st b'day party tomorrow night. Suffering from burn-out at the relatively young age of 28.

Anyhow, the stag do....I gotta thank the lads, and Arkie and Davo in particular for a cracking weekend. There's something quintessentially British about camping in a tent with a load of boozed up lads, in the pouring rain all in the name of love/marriage. Plus then there's crashing a go-kart at 50mph in to a wall of tyres and being shot in the throat by a paintball (I still carry the scars) at less than 20 foot, and if I ever eat another over-barbecued sausage with scotch egg chaser again, it'll be too soon.

But it was a fun time, and led to the creation of this track. Being a rather civilised stag party, I was taken aback by the randomness of some of the groups we saw out and about, and I was taken back to my youth by the pounding poppy techno played in clubs/bars such as The Central and Sailors. I used to love this stuff, and the sight of Brownie's dancing made me realise, I had to make a track that could be played in such a place.

Fast forward to Sunday evening... maybe 8 hours sleep in 3 days and I wasn't going to bed any time soon.

One track sitting on my PC stood out and I just so happened to have the 'pella and the instrumental...hear the cogs turning? Two other 'pellas that fit the bill perfectly and I was on a roll (inspired also by listening to a shed-load of Mark Ronson over the weekend, in particular his mash-tastic boot of Kylie's 'Slow').

My track was finished in probably less than 5 hours, and then the problem came up... a software glitch meant that I couldn't render the track. I kept getting some god-awful corruption 2 minutes in to the MP3. How annoying was that. Probably my tidiest work, and I couldn't share it.

A quick post on GYBO however, and a few days later, and finally I found a shortcut around the issue, slicing the track in to loops, and stitching back together in Adobe Audition 2.0, with the addition of a little intro. I'd like to give a beeeeg thanks to all the guys on GYBO who helped out, especially McSleazy, Riko, Essexboy, Ian Fondue and in particular 10000 Spoons. Good work chaps.

Anyway, on with the show...

Perfect Slow Music

Mason vs. Princess Superstar vs. Kylie Minogue vs. Madonna
(Perfect (Exceeder) vs. Slow vs. Music)



MP3 Here (new link as I've tweaked the timing on the Madge vocal)
http://www.mediafire.com/?0omfsmyz2de

PS. I've bit the bullet and sold my soul and signed up to Facebook - have a look for me (or alternatively message me) and join the Circle

Sometimes I Smile

I think it's safe to say, I am now officially a weekend Bootlegger, only finding time to make tracks on a Friday night.

Anyway, another new track for ya, ironically half inspired by watching highlights from Glastonbury on TV last night (gutted - all of my friends are there, and for the first time in 6 or 7 years, there's no festivals for me this year) with Lily Allen appearing on stage today, and a wonderful performance by beatbox maestro Shlomo on the show, helping me remember I had this track on my PC.

The track in question is Deceptikon's "Sometimes You Here It Coming". A top chilled out track I came across on a random blog a few months back, it's another one I'd been dying to use for ages, but never having anything suitable to mix with it.

Then watching the world stage acts on Glasto last night, it struck me.... an acapella I have by (presumably) Turkish superstar Turkan - "Dudu". It worked a treat, without having to me to chop, or add filters or anything. 10 seconds work for a top mash. However, the 'pella was short by maybe 2 minutes, and I hate having to find filler material - if the track you're working with can't fill a mash, scrap it.

Back to the drawing board and the obvious was looking me in the face, Lily Allen's "Smile". Those in the know, know that Lily is an "Andy Bird" - the kind of girl I'd love to go out; she swears, smokes and wears dresses with trainers - everything I love and more. So it's only right I use her amazing vocal with an amazing track. I hope you find the results enjoyable.

Kept it simple, adding a slight bit of echo, and a leslie rotospeaker filter, mainly to hide some dodgy artifacts from some beat-stretching - easy! And I didn't even have to chop it up for the breaks - perfect timing on Mr. Deceptikon's part.

And sorry if this blog reads weird but I'm still watching Glasto whilst typing and I'm not really concentrating. Plus, the final irony, as I'm posting this, Lily has just come on the TV....sigh....I wish she were my girlfriend....

Sometimes I Smile

Deceptikon vs. Lily Allen
(Sometimes You Here It Coming vs. Smile)




Edited - 25/6/07
After a little bit of feedback on the boards, some of the guys feel that the timing was off in the original version of this track, so I've had a can of beer, pointed my finger in the air a lot counting the beats, and added a wee dash of Nat King Cole with some filters applied, in the hope that this works better for them.

Give it a go and see if it makes any difference,

Cheers, a tired Andy
http://www.mediafire.com/?f7g2gymxtfx