BURIAL – HIDERS (SHAM AN REMIX)

Taking the highly textured and lonely euphoria of the stunningly waterfallish Burial original 'Hiders' as his basic foundation, French maker of music SHAM AN (shaman) offers up an equally stunning remix. Who is SHAM AN? He is from Montpellier, his real name is Pierre–Emmanuel Récio, he makes good sounds. Done. Next.

But seriously like, this is a great song. It might as well be an original song. In fact, I bet many artists or people or whoever would get pretty angsty about unofficial remixes so maybe SHAM AN should've just called it something else for a title and said "YO HERE'S AN ORIGINAL" because, aside from some sampling, a similar vibe and rhythm, it's different. But this is semantics or maybe even just a pale rambling excuse for semantics, not music, and I'm sorry about that. Just listen up to some MUSIC.

It's a gradual climb from the dark ambience of the beginning of this track, but soon we are into the flesh of it, the rich portions of sound that thicken into a kind of heavy water; fluidity is the name of the game here, fluidity chopped and punctuated with a slo-house beat comprising of cricket-like percussion snapping snares and erratic-heartbeat kicks. It's a stream of sounds, a stream of noises, artificial and natural, beautifully half-preserving the samples from Burial's original in muffled ancient farflung capsules opening up and effusing their ghostly lo-fi sounds in the tide of warm synth. There is a heartrendingly empty feeling in the track, evoking the reclusives that (maybe) inspired the name and sound of the original 'Hiders', perpetually lonesome yet in that isolation is a fragile beauty kept alive by the joy of experience and life without too much involvement, and a swirling sweeping sadness due to that lack of interactivity, that lack of touch, that seekerless will-less attitude, ever-hiding. Or something.

• So… that was nice – you can download it HERE (clickety-click)

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GLADYS KNIGHT – I HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE (EONE'S BASEMENT RE-WORK)

This is a remix. But it's a remix with a difference cause it's officially titled the 'Basement Re-Work' and, when you listen to it, you can really get where the basement part comes from. Cause this is all basement. This is all dusty and half-uncovered and dimly lit and unseen for years and subterranean. And it should be so, because the guy who made this – the Brighton-based Eone – usually makes undegroundy darkly cold/cool tracks but this one is my favourite so far.

With samples from the Gladys Knight version creeping in scratchy and distorted as if they've travelled all the way from 1967 to infiltrate your ears, it's a song that basically expounds a quintessential UK sound and that's an eerie, hard and almost dub-flavoured minimalism. Laden with a dusky soundscape of floating soft synths, it is a song of two halves with this wah-wah synth aching with chorused wobble as its liquid riff: a slo-house rhythm with dub clacks for snares that goes uptempo, double-time, for its ending.

It's thick with this almost stifling darkness, a deep quality that feels as if the sounds are viscously orbiting you, cushioning you, all along. The uptempo part feels fresh, there's a groovesome vibe to it, and with the sample chiming in amidst the boom of the beat there's a reliclike air to it, an authenticity, a stamp of the past on something that – with its style – could only be new. Tbh I don't think I've ever heard a Motown sample framed in a sound like this one, and for that, well, this is pioneering. Or it might be the case that my experience or knowledge doesn't extend as far as yours or the next person's, but whateverrr.

• Go listen to Eone's Brighton Representing Mixtape made specially for Y/N

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DCUP MAGIC

One of the many cool things about the world is that it's always gonna be summer somewhere. Whilst we freeze and shiver here in the arctic Northern Hemisphere, our Southern counterparts enjoy hot days and warm nights, and vice versa of course. As such, it means that the music of summer never stops being produced, never dies, so there's always something to get your blood up to temperature and whisk you away to tropical shores, rosasite seas, waves breaking slowly on the reef, still lagoons, breadfruit for breakfast... long live our tropics.

Why do I speak this way? It's because of this song by Melbourne producer DCUP, 'Magic'. Just one day old right now, the song comes from a legacy of hot-blooded tracks including the very nice 'Don't Be Shy', which included a remix by Japanese purveyor of emotional and retro house, Boys Get Hurt. I was touched by the message that DCUP, aka real person Duncan MacLennan, left as a description for the song, saying its purpose was "...to not only keep you dancing through these beautiful summer nights down in Oz, but to keep our friends in the North warm on their chilling winter eve's." That's what I like to hear. A bit of togetherness. Global community spirit.

True to its name, 'Magic' is a little goûter of magic. Within seconds of the track starting an unbeatable bassline pops in with a funky bounce, soon joined with samba type piano chords, augmented with excitable bweeps and the occasional flash of synth chords. That samba rhythm in the music gives the track a hot and sweaty atmosphere, something sensually calling out with a wink in a where-will-this-lead manner in the midst of the driving slo-house, disco-evoking beat. The sample of some husky voice saying "Magic..." is a great touch, beautifully placed dynamic punctuation in this exciting sentence of music.

The mix of funk, latin and disco in 'Magic' lands in the cradle of your ears like something retroactive, a time capsule dusted off and polished with modern tools to give it a zeitgeistical familiarity whilst it shines with its own lustre: the sheen of nostalgic novelty alien past. It feels fresh, especially with those varying elements, and clearly comes from a mind that loves to create music for people to dance to.

Fun fact: DCUP collaborated with Australian band Yolanda Be Cool for 2010 hit 'We No Speak Americano'; now that Latin lilt to 'Magic' makes more sense and I love DCUP all the more for it.

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AVAY MIRACLE

Just open your eyes and click more things than usual and embrace curiosity and be inquisitive and you'll soon find yourself discovering some pretty cool music. That's literally all there is to it. As such, I've been clickin around like a madman in the last couple of days, sometimes until I realise I'm very deep into the unholy early hours of the morning. So it happens. In any case, the fruits of this labour produces some really nice new sounds to listen to.

This track is obviously one of them. It's the kind of thing that you can be instantly drawn to just from the first few seconds of listening. It is called 'Miracle' and comes from a Russian producer who usually goes by the name MAD-B but has eschewed this moniker for the less-in-your-face AVAY; he accompanied the track with a note: Meet my new project named "AVAY". And what a happy meeting it was. Therefore, I would also like to introduce to you the deeply delicious sounds of this soulful number.

Being relatively minimalistic perhaps makes this an even more captivating experience. Softly caressed electric piano sounds sit atop driving tunnels of bass punctuated with heart-stopping kicks. Ornamental synth bleeps drop like glistening icicles into the deep of the track. After a mid-section sampling some Russian dialogue, the beat comes in with renewed gusto, adding dragging-wind-up hi-hats into the equation and occasional cymbal crashes. Its finish is stark and lonely, leaving you with the kick and ambient fizzes after what was an emotive, even moving, song.

The star of the show here, besides the beautiful production, is the singing. It's a sample, a slowed-down, low-register version of the vocals in The Temper Trap's song, also called 'Miracle'. What's clear is that it is gloriously layered and pockmarked with lilts of romance scintillating like some religious revelation of love, the words "And I may not always believe / But you're nothing short of a miracle" taking a new significance in the hear-thumping slo-house electronica of AVAY's rendition of the track. Watch out for this guy: he could be on to a winner.

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LIFE & LIMB FOOL'S NEST (LIES "PROMISES" REMIX) [FREE DOWNLOAD]

Hello. Remixes, not always but often, are really fun. It's not just a re-tweaking of a finished song, it's a whole new song, a whole new person's creative vision based on the original elements launched into the world by the original creator of said elements. It goes to show not only how interesting it is to have somebody else's take on things every once in a while, but also that "art" - yeah that includes music - can never be finished. Even Marcel Duchamp "remixed" the Mona Lisa by drawing a moustache on the original and calling it L.H.O.O.Q (which is a pun cause in French, the reading sounds like elle a chaud au cul). As long as remixers are out there in the world, art of any kind can never be considered utterly finished. In anything's contemporary, original format, however, it is difficult to see a new beginning - that is, unless you are the kind of person who can remix things.

But I'm talkin' too much! About stuff! Stuff!

So let's talk about this song. It is, as you may have guessed by now, a remix. And it is a very nice example of a kind of completely different take on the original. In this instance, the track - 'Fool's Nest' - is originally by a one-half-Italian, one-half-New-Yorker duo called Life & Limb. It's a nice chunky slice of synthpop that is buzzing with saw-waves and sentimental overtones.

Enter LIES. This Italian duo - Oscar Cini and Piero... something - (whom I've written about a couple of times before) have essentially softened the original and turned into something more dreamy, more intangible in a way, than the structured original. They've sped up the pulsing lead synths of the original, teasing with the hint of tumbling hi-hats in the background as the vocals come in ghostishly looped on one syllable with forever-eternal glassy synth chords sweeping the whole song with their ambience.

It's the kind of thing that makes you drift off a little; LIES' style of embedding an addictive, cyclical beat in amongst a bristling thicket of noise has that kind of effect on a person. Thin snares pummel the offbeat with minimal hi-hats riding high above a constant click and the steady, sometime-rolling thump of the kick. A wonderful take on a song which is now similar to this one in title, and a bit in sound, only: even the atmosphere changed from sentimental and slightly sad to one of feelingless dreaminess. Hooray for the (good) remixers of the world!

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OKADADA SHIMIN POOL

A blast of summer as we head into the depths of Autumn, September engulfing us like a galaxy-sized blob of soggy days and slowly browning trees. Yep, a blast of summer. I think a blast of summer is what's needed right now. So I'm kinda glad I'm a month late for writing about this particular tune. It is by Osaka-based producer (or as they say, "DJ/Trackmaker" - I like "trackmaker", I'll use that one day) Okadada or okadada or OKADADA and it is called 'Shimin Pool'.

Which is funny, because it's kind of a pun. "Shimin pool" sounds a bit like "swimming pool" but also "shimin" in Japanese means citizen or community so it's "community pool" - hoho. In addition, it comes from a recent-ish compilation CD by netlabel Maltine Records called 市民プールサイド - or Community Poolside. Puns an' that - fun, no? Anyway it's cool and it's damn summery and I think I need to emigrate someplace warmer.

聴く〜　(Listen〜)

It begins with a rather funky selection of percussion - bongos and whatnot - which is the base of all good dance-a-thon: a few drums and you're well away, am I right? It's a lush blanket of beats that is a great warm-up to the rest of the song. Some modulating synth chords come in and lightly lead us to the house beat that accompanies us for the rest of the song. House piano chords make an appearance too, their warm timbre screaming "beach", "party", and "summer" and "summer beach party" all at once. The tempo here is also perfect. Just right for chilling or moving - you decide!

The lead string-synth on this song drip with liquid sunshine, it's like dappled light by an actual poolside or beachside as palm trees wave gently above. With an old-school twist to it - those kinds of strings just seem to have that vibe y'know? The vocals are cool too, faraway like a floating-and-melting-at-the-same-time pistachio ice cream in amongst the summery sounds. Then there's this groovy bass breakdown - yeah! - bwing boong de-ding bom bom... You know how a bass sounds anyway. Real organic sounding electric bass that taps yer bones. Nice dynamic when the vocals come back in - and a lead synth screeches in for the final part of the song. All in all: a much-needed dose of nostalgic 90s-esque funky slo-house that takes me away to a sunnier place for four minutes.

You can download the album on which 'Shimin Pool' appears, 市民プールサイド - or Community Poolside, on Maltine Records' site.

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LIES FT JUNO// ORIENTE [FREE DOWNLOAD]

Last time I wrote about Italian duo LIES and their song 'Escape I/S/M' it was thanks to them, or one of them at least, sending me a message. Now I'm writing about them again and it's down to the same fact of their sending a message. It's difficult to keep tabs on everything at once so to have lovely music delivered right to you is very nice indeed. So, thank you!

This time around, however, they have teamed up with fellow Italian producer JUNO// to create a very nice song indeed: 'Oriente'. I've gotta admit I was quite surprised at the result. It's a pretty intense sounding song, with a very solid beat and some very solid bass, all tied together with some wonderful crackling synth arpeggios. It's a veritable electro playground, having all the fun of retro music crossed with the nice production methods of the modern day. You'll find it difficult not to bop your head, wiggle your toes, tap your fingers, raise your eyebrows or whatever it is you happen to do when you find rhythmic solace in music.

Those bass synths are something else, aren't they? Really get under your skin and into your body. Very loud. Those along with that slo-house beat give it an epic feel - especially with the occasional battering of tom drums. There's a dose of the tropical in there, too, with some beach-friendly tubular bell-type things, heavily accented with reverb and other things, making them seem a little unearthly. Screaming synth streams over the top in some places, heavily modulated and sounding like a waterbeam (a Pokémon move for those who don't know) or something similar. Javelins of neon electricity.

Add to this a laid-back, 1990s-songstress-type vocal sample and you have a pretty interesting sound. The dynamic breaks are really nice too - the one at 2:49 for example that only lasts for seconds is perfect; it's just a small break from the intense rumblings of the song, but it's enough to give those same rumblings some massive "oomph" when they come back in. Nice sounds all nicely composed. In fact it actually reminds me of something... kind of a slowed down version of 'Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)' by Eurythmics. Get what I mean? Similar synth. Anyway.

You can download this song for free. FREE. Download it and put it on your iPod/Phone or whatever other device you happen to own for listening to music on-the-go and just wait till it pops up. Imagine it would be especially cool if you listened to this on a crowded rush-hour tube train on the way home. I don't usually give recommendations like this so I don't think I'll make it a regular thing.

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