BEATS OF LOVE
10. Heavenly Trax (Jonny Nash remix) by Cos/Mes
FIRST WEEK I've not bought anything in absolute aeons, so grabbed the first necessary tune at hand, which is this. Jonny Nash was an entry point into more calming musical waters.
One of my favourite shows ever was the Aficionado promoted Land of Light, his wonderful collaboration with Kyle Martin, on a snowy late March evening in 2013. Well, snowy until I arrived in town dressed like an Eskimo in a sauna. Everyone not from Shaw, (everyone) was dressed in more fitting spring attire. It redefined what entertainment could and should be and definitely inspired SFH, as did his label Melody As Truth that surfaced the following year.
He contributed a 'victorious, anthemic, rooftop dance' to the abstruse Snaker series. He has produced quite possibly my favourite Music From Memory record, from many, with his Make A Wilderness LP, which is a work of pure genius. He's also the only remixer to have added something of value to the majestic Tommy Awards. Basically, I've followed the guy's upward trajectory. However, let's rewind back to this. An early effort that still sounds seriously masterful and more than highly accomplished. In 2010, the world was getting really loud and sounding like a shitty early 90s hoover-remix, the type the mighty Reese would snap into tiny shards. Whilst also looking like a desperate, down on its luck celeb, swapping the crack-den for the magic bus.
Now, it's far worse, with folk bypassing fear altogether during a global pandemic and sounding much more angry, berserk even. And looking like they've used up all the world's ink to spell 'mum' gruffly on their necks. Basically, a collective and unisex, dunderhead macho-ism, is now shouting off its own furrowed eyebrows. And it sounds and looks horrible. Little wonder soothing horizontal musical-mind pinball is still the proper way to escape it. Deflecting one soothing yummy beat straight off another. And nothing screams soothing horizontal musical-mind pinball more than this track.
He pretty much started from scratch by changing its rhythmic pulse by adding instrumentation to create fresh tropical layers and a toned down vocoder to add a depth that makes this remix the archetypal soothing horizontal musical-mind pinball tune. It pre-dates a lot of lazily labelled new-age house music by a few months at least, although someone will no doubt correct me and point out many early 90s B-sides which don't really count.
I'm talking analogue obsessed disco diverging new-age house music of the highest order. The type now given over to a whole genre of house music in stores. It's fucking ground-breaking, yet surprisingly, still sounds incredible. Add the word ground-breaking to most things and you usually have a sure-fire anti-climax.
If you're bypassing the fear and not giving a fuck about anyone but yourself, do it because you are alone on a hammock on your own island, with this playing loud, and for no other reason.
LISTEN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3MmWWfSbyg
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