29th February 12
PREMIERE: Distal & HxdB – Booyant (Archie Pelago Remix) [Tectonic]
Last week we published our first ever live video mix from NYC trio Archie Pelago and in Joe Moynihan’s accompanying article he made reference to the group’s live appeal – considering that as a musical outfit, they’re a little bit more interesting visually than a dude in a grey Oxford cotton shirt bouncing behind two turntables. The fact is that their just as intriguing on record, fracturing electronic notions with heavily delayed brass instruments and one hell of a cello player and it just so happens that the remix Moynihan mentions in the introduction, Archie’s remix of Distal and HxdB‘s collaboration ‘Booyant’, is out on Monday. Today Tectonic granted us permission to bring you the premiere stream of the full thing.
What Archie Pelago take from the original is easily recognised, with them transcribing the main mouth trumpet riff to a real life saxophone, but what really stands out is the progression and melodic evolution of the composition; it’s free, un regimented, completely human (even though I’d imagine its been quite sternly post produced) and the end result is all the better for it. Where Distal and HxdB’s original version is subtle and measured, their brittle snares giving way to the tuned tom toms and then, that riff, Archie’s version is richly musical and lively, without ever sounding like coffee table gentrification like oh… say, the Me & You version of Roni Size’s ‘Brown Paper Bag’.
There is a danger in ‘live’ musicians covering electronic music, to funk it up too much so it sounds like a cheese ball version of it. It’s natural as a musician to want to put your own stamp on it, but what Archie Pelago seem able to do is uphold the line between serious improv and the dancefloor. That respect and immersion in club culture they talk about here is patently obvious in this arrangement and what they’ve done here stands out like a bat signal for the righteous possibilities of what their formula can produce…
Distal & HxdB’s Booyant is out on Tectonic on Monday 5th March 2012.
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