Finest Things That Dreams Are Made Of Thursday 17 September 2009

Human League's "Things That Dreams Are Made Of" (off of the instrumental "League Unlimited Orchestra" album) with the vocal from "The Finest" by SOS Band.

I can't really claim this one as it wasn't my idea. Let me explain....

Back when bootlegs were All The Rage, a producer called Richard X became famous for doing them and applied the idea to a bunch of pop stuff, including "Finest Dreams" by Kelis.



Now, it doesn't take a genius to work out where the bits come from, but I'd never heard the two original tracks together before and besides it was pretty entertaining at the time since the Kelis thing was pretty big, so I used to play this out. You can just about do it on a pair of turntables, though I'd run the vocal at +8 and the track at -5 :)

I'm not sure if the Richard X thing actually uses the whole Human League track or is replayed - there's certainly other stuff been added but the changes and the way the vocal fits over the top is pretty much like playing the two oiriginals (though you do have to stop the vocal for a bit in the middle).

The SOS band thing doesn't have an acapella as such, it's a sparse bit at the end of the dub mix on the 12". It does have some synths and percussion but I mostly ducked them out here. I always tried to get another track on before the stuff about Norman Wisdom comes in at the end but never quite managed it so I've left it in here too!

Learn to be Crazy in Love Friday 4 September 2009

Beyonce's "Crazy in Love" vocal over Cappo's "Learn to be Strong"... This was really a way to extend the life of "Crazy in Love", which I thought was massive as soon as I heard it. It was another Rich Harrison production but you knew that sooner or later it was going to be all over everywhere and when that finally happened I guess this was a way of still playing it out. Kind of.

The Cappo track has vocals in the samples so, though it was easy to play out off of vinyl, you had to duck those and there's actually not that much of "Crazy in Love" in it.

A maybe under-rated UK hip hop track on tru-thoughts too...