There's no point me commenting on the chosen songs themselves - they're light years beyond my critique...
I didn't know Bowie till the Let's Dance album in '83 but then, as is very often the/my way, I went backwards and liked what I heard. It was only really with the advent of internet and Spotify specifically that I ticked all my missing Bowie boxes. It got to the stage a couple of years back when he released the 'Next Day' album out of the blue that I was quite excited to hear it - and there are a couple of songs from it may well get visited in the future - and then all of a sudden in January it was a bit of a blur - there were rumours that another album had come out of nowhere - the rumours were true - the album was obtained and it was dense - it demanded concentration and listening - and before either of those could be given he was dead. It was genuinely shocking. And now listening to it it's genuinely remarkable. The man did actually turn his demise into his last artistic statement and that's an incredible thing to do.
A couple of weeks after his death I was having a meal at my Mum's and she asked me whether I thought the reaction to his death had been over-stated at all or whether it was in keeping with his stature - I answered her straight away but it took me a while to then get comfortable with what I'd said, but I am now and I stand by it - I genuinely think Bowie's death is the single biggest loss from the world of post-war British culture and I'm still not sure that the country realises what's gone - the only global losses felt as acutely would be Presley and Jackson - Bowie genuinely belongs in that company.
Only after he'd died did I learn that Rick Wakeman had played the piano on the original Life On Mars - his solo tribute, played live on Radio 2, is beautiful...
D's last five;Isaac Hayes - another legendary artists that I simply don't know enough about - his version of 'Walk On By' is MASSIVE though and it's nice to see this join that and one other by him on DHS - my kind of tune
Young Fathers - I've tried five or six times with this track - I want to like it - it sounds like I should but I just can't seem to - I don't dislike it at all - frustrating track
Prodigy/Public Enemy/Manfred Mann - didn't like this at first - now I really very much do - splendid
Neuropol - Yes mate - 'liquid funk' updated-Bukem style - just an immense pleasure to listen to over and over again
Leftfield - I've tried hard on this as well - no argument that it would sound immense on a club rig but I just don't like it that much - whole album left me cold to be honest - hey-ho...
My five;
Starts off with three tunes from a recent mix I did - not particularly adventurous of me if you've heard the mix already but they were on my 'possibles' list before I did the mix so...
Roisin Murphy remix - starts off ok - vocal comes in - builds, drops, and then blossoms into a lovely, lovely thing
Laurent Garnier - this man has done some seminal records and I honestly think this is right up there with the best of them - the build, the looped vocal sample, the strings and then the keys - SO simple - so, SO, good
Kenny Leaven - Sasha dropped this in a set from Mexico that I was sad enough to be watching live online at 1am one Saturday morning in January and I genuinely stood up and raved in my living room - MASSIVE
And then two that I haven't used in a mix. Yet...
El_Txef_A - fairly recent discovery - mournful and melancholic strings set against a flat-out-classic looped breakbeat with some filthy, squelchy, acid and some ethereal voices - lovely - and then in the second half you're treated to the addition of someone reading some sort of appraisal of a passage from a James Joyce novel. Deal with it...
Efdemin - bit of a risk this one, in as much as I only discovered it today and it's squeaked in here at the expense of an absolute snorter of a tune so let's see how it goes... I'm not that familiar with Efdemin's stuff or the guy who's remixed it - Traumprinz - but on the strength of this (which was out a couple of years back) I shall be investigating a lot further - the first half is nice - 'pretty' almost - then the breakbeat kicks in and the second half is LUSH.
Man-hugs all round...
