#songbender part 26 – Aphrodite feat. Gail McLean – I Wanted It More & More
ok now, after the last one i really think i should ride the goa train even though i guess it scares a lot of people off – all the power to you, but you don’t know what’cha missin’.
well anyway. so this came up by the allmighty DJ Shuffle that manages the playlist in the car (not a too difficult job, it’s only like 3k songs from extreme metal to extreme techno, no worries)
and i was just blown away. again. once again. for the 500th time. again. and i thought since i can’t post another Astral Projection song for a time, let’s go with this one.
because this one is soooo polished. soooo smooth. it sounds absolutely GREAT even in 2023, and as i mentioned before, you MUST HAVE read this earlier, Aphrodite is considered jump-up, which is a black sheep in the dnb expert community, because it’s “sooo primitive bro i mean it doesn’t even have distorted unfollowable baselines on top of the distorted unfollowable drum-loop-mountains that the good ones do, DUUUH”
which is all and utter bullcrap, mind you, but let’s move on. so the thing about this is that it doesn’t kill the vocal, but also doesn’t RELY on it that much, the piano is absolutely frikkkin’ brilliant. And all the effects, i honestly don’t know how the almighty aphrodite managed this in 1996, because i sure have a hard time 30 fkin years later, i can tell ya.
yes, of course, not the most complex song in the history of music, this was made for the dancefloor, as all jump-up back in those days. but the mixing is masterful, and the way he does the fills is absolutely amazing. you just KNOW that these are actual knobs being twisted by someone, and not an envelope curve like these days (or maybe they are, i dunno, what do i know, but i honestly think it’s real hardware being abused by real people).
this may be the most polished track that Mr. King has ever produced, at least according to the stuff that I know, and I would dare to say I’m somewhat familiar with his shit. It got famous as the opening track of DJ Wildchild’s dnb compilation thingys, and hell yeah, i’d start my own with it for sure!
This is just a bullseye if you like the genre. If not, you may find this “boring”, “repetitive”, “uninteresting” and whatnot, and that’s ok. But since this is my series and we’re taking on the ones that meant (and still do) a lot to me, this just HAS to be here.
and it has #26, which, to those who know me a little bit better, may realize that has a special place in my hear (it’s the number of Patrik Elias, my all time favorite player on the Devils).
so there you have it. I could probably write more, but this track doesn’t really need it. Give it a try, and come back to it like 3-4 times, and you’ll see what i mean.