disturbo remix / reversion
it’s the next Bandcamp Friday on 1.3 and I’ll be releasing a remix of a track by Fast Ghost called Disturbo. It’s been both a kinda spontaneous decision and a long time in the pipeline.
Not long after joining Mastodon, I saw a post by Fast Ghost saying how they viewed all their releases as effectively ‘open source’ and that if anyone ever wanted to rework, remix or even sample anything they did, they were welcome to, so I reached out about doing a remix and they kindly shared the stems. I had anticipated it would be a pretty quick turnaround but I was very wrong. As you will have seen if you are looking at this website, I ended up moving very slowly for a period of time - only finally releasing new material on 2.2.24. In that time, I also did a couple of other remixes both of which…… well I don’t know what has happened really… radio silence (another post for another time maybe). UPDATE: The day after I posted this, I heard that one of the other remixes is being released - I’ll do a post about that in the next few days.
Anyway, I kept listening to Disturbo and trying to figure out a way into the remix. For me, the objective of a remix is to create something that lands half way between the original and something that sounds like ‘this occasional society’. It’s not necessarily the approach others would choose and certainly isn’t the easiest path to take - the original artist may well not particularly like it, but it guarantees that I’m happy with what I’m doing, which is always the key for me.
So Disturbo has been sitting at the back of my mind for well over a year, then, working on the first new track since ‘standing with damage’ I was, quite early on in the process, struck by the thought that what I was doing might mesh well with Disturbo. Sure enough, with a bit of reshaping and my usual ‘chuck the kitchen sink in’ approach then stripping stuff back out, I ended up with the finished track.
Happily, Fast Ghost got back really quickly and said they really liked the new version and I was welcome to do whatever I wanted with it. Given the open source nature of the Fast Ghost approach, I’ve decided to put it on Bandcamp on a Pay What You Want / Free basis with all proceeds to Cancer Research UK (just as the original track was).
As the next Bandcamp Friday has been announced as 1.3.24, the timing seems perfect. Also in keeping with Fast Ghost’s approach, I'll also include a link in the thank you letter (I always put a thank you letter in with the download) to all the stems from this track should anyone want to remix them - I actually did this on ‘standing with damage’ as well.
Now, the more observant of you will have noticed that, by releasing on 1.3., I am somewhat breaking my tradition around release dates. This is true BUT it’s a remix rather then new material so…. yeah, I don’t know.
So, that’s where we are today.