The roots of this project lay in a trip around the UK & Europe in 2022. In that time,the beatmakers Finn Rees and Allan McConnell visited as many record stores as they could in London, Paris, Berlin, and Amsterdam and dug up plenty of golden-era disco, boogie, and rare groove sounds which they then went on to sample. Their own tastes and styles were added into the mix with a hint of hip-hop and a touch of 70s nostalgia and the first album proved a huge success.The pair self-release their own music and have had tracks included on the FIFA 23 soundtrack as well as turning out plenty of fresh remixes and laying down electric and eclectic live shows. This new album features some drums and percussion by Lucky Pereira, and bass guitar by Matthew Hayes.
How to listen: There are a couple of ways to proceed. First, you can listen to the whole album, which you will find below, and then read the notes. Or, read the notes as you listen to each track. This will completely change your perspective on the whole release itself and bring you closer to the artist and their work.
GET DOWN!
GET DOWN! Is the second single we released from the album last year, and marks another exploration into the Broken Beat genre. When we deciding the running order of the album, we realised that the explosive band hits that start off the song would be a perfect way to kick things into gear. We also filmed a clip for this song with our friend Jevan Howard-Jones, dancing his way through various pockets of London.
SECOND STEP
This song was birthed from a live jam we used to play to end our show, after our closer track SOULACOASTA. If you listen you’ll hear fragments of the main guitar sample from GET DOWN! throughout to keep it flowing. This song is very groove-focused and features loads of layers of our drummer Lucky Pereira playing different percussive parts.
FLASHBACK
We’ve been playing this song in the live set for a while now and it always goes down a treat. We usually have it in the first few tracks of the set due to the way it gently builds up brick by brick – starting with the percussion and breaks, and then the big melodic synth lead and pulsating synth chords. The finishing touches on this song were done at our friend Tom Hann’s home studio in Tasmania, where we used his Yamaha DX7 to create some big clustered synth drones that play throughout the track.
ONLY ONE ft. IZY
ONLY ONE is the focus track of the album. It’s built around a sample of the song “Not So Tall” by one of our favourite Naarm/Melb bands, Izy. The idea for this started when listening to the vinyl of their amazing record Moon. Finn then sped the tempo and key up and added an uplifting house feel. We then added extra layers of synths and textures, that flourish throughout the song and reach their final cadence in the outro – where it strips back to just keyboards and found sounds. This song also has a film clip directed by Allan and Nathan Guy, shot on 35mm film. It follows the journey of a girl who is emerging from a depressive slump, and through dance is beginning to see the world with a childlike sense of curiosity and wonder. The dance sequences of the clip were shot on location at the Victorian Quakers’ Centre, in West Melbourne.
TAKE A CHANCE
TAKE A CHANCE is built around a jazz vocal sample found whilst record digging. It’s one of the smoother tracks off the album, taking inspiration from hip-hop producers such as J Dilla and Madlib. It features our bassist Matt Hayes with a groovy and deep bass line that morphs throughout the track, ending with a flat-out boogie, reminiscent of Earth, Wind and Fire.
NO GREATER LOVE
The idea for NO GREATER LOVE started from a “Beat Battle” that happened weekly online during lockdown. This involved a handful of producers getting a sample, and 45 mins to flip it into a beat. Afterwards, everyone would vote on their favourite beats in a listening session and a winner would be crowned. The demo was taken from the beat battle to the studio, where our drummer Lucky laid down the majority of the break-beat drums that chug the track along. This song has short bits and pieces of the book/movie East of Eden by John Steinbeck.
HOLY SOUND
HOLY SOUND is one of the darker, more ethereal songs on the album. It’s arranged to have a sweeping long build up, specifically for DJs who play a bit of heavier and more brooding dance music. It features old soul drums chopped in to a four-to-the-floor groove, peppered with a number of distorted, arpeggiated synths – recorded on the Moog Grand Mother. This song is inspired by the 1971 neo-noir crime thriller Klute.
THE DON
THE DON is the third single that we snuck out before the year ended in December 2022. On the original release, it also features the Rhodes Mix of the song, where the piano sample was re-recorded by Finn on our Fender Rhodes in the studio, and the drums were re-arranged with more emphasis on Lucky’s live kit. This resulted in a more laid-back “chill out” version that contrasts the intensity of the original mix.
SNAP TO IT!
SNAP TO IT! is the first single we released through the Remedy Project last year. We picked this song as the first taste of the album as it gets straight into the thick of it. It starts with some quirky bell samples and textures we found, then a blistering drum fill launches it straight into 130bpm of funk. This song is arranged in a way where the listener gets both extremes – during the B section the drums completely strip away to have a focus on the synth melody and chords and it’s quite sparse. Then the drum fill rolls around again and all hell breaks loose.
BREAK FROM IT!
BREAK FROM IT!, is, as you might have guessed, part 2 to SNAP TO IT! After we’d wrapped up the production and mixing on SNAP TO IT!, we were playing it out often with the live band, but with an improv-focused open ending subject to how we were feeling on the night. We got to play some really special shows, and it wasn’t unusual for SNAP TO IT! to turn into a 10-minute odyssey with elements of techno and deep house. BREAK FROM IT! is birthed from an idea we came up with when playing in Hobart, at a venue called Altar. It turns down the intensity a notch from SNAP TO IT!, with more focus around a melodic synth lead. The song’s form builds more gently, into a keys soundscape outro that was also conceived during our live shows.
PURSUIT
The first idea for PURSUIT started on our TR8 drum machine, creating a wonky, uptempo garage groove. It then got sprinkled with bits and pieces of an old Polish soul sample, that plays out in its entirety in the outro. The B sections in this song throw a few more nods to the broken beat genre, both in the choice of crazy jazz chords, and the broken groove. This song is definitely inspired by the work of broken producers Kaidi Tatham and Dego. The melodies in the B section were sung by our friend and long-time collaborator Kudu Joy, and recorded at her home studio in Hobart.
CRASH N BURN
This is another idea that was started as a “Beat Battle” creation. The first version of this song was ridiculously short, probably around 3 mins – but after showing it to a few friends we got some feedback that it should be a longer form song, arranged with the intention of getting played out by DJs. A great memory was closing the live stage at Strawberry Fields festival, and after wrapping up at the allotted time slot, the staff asked us to go out and do an encore as the crowd was so eager. We took a gamble and played this live for the very first time and it got an incredible response!
COSMIC EVOLUTION
The beginning of the end of the album! This song is intended to be a bit of a journey as the name indicates. It starts with a funky, NYC-style house groove laden with various percussive instruments that Finn found on his travels to America. It features another big melodic synth lead recorded on our Moog Sub37, and in the eleventh hour of finishing the mixes, we ended up giving it to Kudu Joy to double with vocals after hearing the excellent job she did on PURSUIT. As the song progresses, it opens up into a second chapter with a big collage of different samples from all around the world.
WRITTEN IN THE STARS
This is the outro for the album, originally chopped from COSMIC EVOLUTION – after completing the mix we felt it deserved its own spot. It features two instruments that were on loan to us from our friend Kuzich who was sharing our studio with us at the time we were finishing the album. The first is the Mellotron M4000D, which we used to create the myriad of string and mallet layers that flutter throughout the song. The second is the Roland CR-78, an organ drum machine known for its prominence in pop music of the 70s and 80s, with artists such as Genesis and Sly and The Family Stone often featuring this in songs. We used this to record the gentle groove that descends into a delicate reverb that closes out the song and the album.
