"IF YOU WANT A VISION OF THE FUTURE, IMAGINE CRAP 808 SAMPLES STAMPING ON A HUMAN FACE- FOREVER"
White Label
Having been rinsed by a who’s who of the best UK bass DJs over the last month, the mysterious Harmonimix moniker (spoilers: it’s James Blake) drops a cheeky white label of freaky RnB refits. Its odd to think I’d be heaping praise on a remix of A Milli in 2010 (or, well, ever to be honest- the original’s pretty unfuckwithable), but this one’s a little special. With some clever use of auto tune, Blake rewires Wayne’s cough syrup stream of conscious into an amazingly melodic monster. Not entirely unlike the harmonising he put to amazing effect on the staggering good Stop What You’re Doing remix, the original is revamped into a brilliantly arranged, multi-coloured soul tune. Despite this sounding not entirely unlike some awful, gauche auto-tune-the-news shit, the remix is genuinely great, successfully (and inexplicably) dodging wackness.
Things get even better on the flip with a glorious robo-gospel reworking of Destiny Child’s Bills Bills Bills. The original’s a grade-A bomb as it is, and yet Blake cuts it up amazingly, re-recording and multitracking the vocals into some outrageously good harmonies whilst chopping up his characteristic mutant RnB synths with some swaggertastic percussion. Its hard to imagine injecting the original chorus with any more sassy bravado but Blake somehow manages it, blasting the unforgettable hook with some crazy pitch bent business. Echoes of Hudson Mohawke’s playbox attitude slip through, and whilst its not entirely dissimilar conceptually to Slugabed’s hot Superphreak 12”, the record is characteristically James Blake through and through.
And amongst introspective sub bass worship, its always nice for a little fun to seep in.
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