Pig & Dan // Decade Remixes Part 1 [Soma]
Pig & Dan are an act that have caught my ears since I first heard the dark groove of ‘Addiction’ on Sander Kleinenberg’s Renaissance mix, ‘Everybody’ back in 2003 – in the intervening years they have been prolific proponents of superior techno and tech house, and this release features four new takes on three of the original tracks from their very impressive recent studio album, ‘Decade’.
Insomnia was a lovely down tempo techno work out in its original form, and Carlo Lio’s tech house take on it has some interesting elements – but after nigh on seven minutes you don’t end up in much of a different place to where you started out, and as such, the track struggled to maintain my interest. Popof’s remix of the same track however is much snappier, the intro containing the well spaced bass notes of the original before the main bassline arrives, coming across all evil and really quite old school. Some nice hand claps then come in to punctuate the track after the first break, before an atmospheric pad starts to hover in the background and lead us into the main breakdown – this is lovely and spacious, stripping the track down to the bare bones before building the tension up very nicely indeed.
Steve Parker then takes on a remix of Lone Ranger, starting off with percussion from the original and a deeper, moodier bassline before the melody of the original starts to ease its way into the background, becoming more and more insistent before reaching a crescendo, and disappearing off into the distance – this leaves us with just the bassline and some shuffling percussion, as the track starts to get a bit of a groove on. It then proceeds to repeat pretty much exactly what went before, and as such, interest is lost – not a patch on the very impressive original.
The Justin Berkovi remix of the very nice original Keep It Coming also has a rather old school sound to the main riff, which comes in early on the back of a pounding kick drum and some very prominent crash and ride cymbals – Berkovi introduces some interesting sounds alongside eerie effects from the original, and just as things start to get a bit plodding, he finally starts to introduce some momentum just after the 3 minute mark, with the introduction of a clappy snare and some nice wet cymbals to open things out. Takes a while to get going and the crash cymbals are too much for me, but this mix has its merits – again though, the original version remains the far superior track.
Overall an interesting package, but with such high quality originals to compete against, these producers were always going to have to make great strides to keep up – Popof’s production comfortably takes home the gold in the face of weaker opposition here.
Release Date: Out Now
Words: Stevie Reid
