THE WEB - Freeze!

Im Summer 2007, a friend came by for barbecue and brought this old music cassette, a tape he and a friend recorded when they were DJing at a party. It was sunday morning, they were tired and people just didn't want to leave. So they played the worst songs/records they had (grandma's German "Schlagers", Folksongs with lyrics that no one would dare to perform today... etc.) and mixed in all kinds of crazy stuff, such as excerpts from radio plays as voice overs. Heino and Heintje on acid... One of these inserts was from an old Swiss-German radio play. My friend told me that he had found it on one of these plastic foil single discs they once used for promotion/PR purposes; you could find them in print magazines or mailings (if you were born around 1970 perhaps you'll remember...). From the short sequence of the radio play that was on the tape - obviously a detective story - I sampled the sound of footsteps in a corridor you can hear in the beginning of Freeze! Another element was, of course, the voice samples - someone telling people to freeze and stand against the wall, and someone saying "Well done, Max!". These samples and, within,  the scenery of a bank robbery, prepared the grounds for the Freeze!-Series. 


Freeze! is my second series of electronic music tracks. In this series, i tried to go to the maximum pressure of bass - so don't use loudness or other equalizer settings with more bass!! it's already in twice! ;-)


I started from where the first series ended: the clumsy breakbeat of Freeze! is based on the 2-step beat of the track Love you, which was the last track of my first Album The Web Experience. Right after finishing Freeze! I decided to do a remix of the track. Although in this Freeze! Rmx there are only slight variations in the synth sounds and beats, the result is quite "spacy". With Freeze! Max I continued in that direction - finally it became something like a classic "hard trance"-version of Freeze! (...and my favourite one - "Well done, Max!").


With Freeze! Minimax I went back to the breakbeat. Here, the focus lies on the e-bass line. Freeze! Supermax finally can be described as a melange of the Max and Minimax-Versions, with a straight beat and several added synths and sound effects; perhaps the most characteristic feature is the guitar that joins in for the last two and a half minutes of the track. While the other versions were all produced in one go during september 2007, Supermax underwent several slight modifications until I was happy with the final result; the final mix down was in may 2008.


While working on some remixes of old 80ies tracks in summer 2008 (I'll tell you more about that in a future post) I also went back to Freeze! and produced another Remix that started from the Minimax-Version. That was it - with this track called Frozen (july 2008), the Freeze!-Series was completed. Definitely.


The original version of Freeze! and the Freeze! Rmx is available with visuals (february / june 2011). You can also preview/listen to Freeze! Max and Frozen (see below).

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THE WEB - Freeze!
1. Freeze! ......................6:28
2. Freeze! Rmx ..................7:38
3. Freeze! Max ..................8:54
4. Freeze! Minimax ..............6:33
5. Freeze! Supermax .............7:08
6. Frozen .......................5:29
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BRICO - not available, 2007/2008


click to download Freeze! EP  (mediafire)




Watch and listen

THE WEB - Remixes of an old classic... and a newborn: Electric Sea

It was in summer 1993 when we went to a party everyone in Winterthur's cellars was talking about weeks before: Sven Väth would be there! Playing a 3-hours set  - at least! The only performance in Switzerland! etc. It was the second "VISION"-festival (http://www.vision-festival.com), and it was my first outdoor "Goa - party". It took place at a gravel pit somewhere between Zürich and Schaffhausen. After this, VISION grew into a legendary event in Switzerland.


It was that summer when Sven Väth rocked the juvenile techno scene with his new trancy tracks, "L'esperanza" was top - remember the dolphin pictures and whale sounds? And one of our "party hymns" was Energy52's "Café del Mar". Essentially, the DJs then always played the Kid Paul Mix. So to me, this was always the "original" version.


Since then, "Café del Mar" became so famous that you won't be able to create a complete list of its remix versions. www.discogs.com for example lists 102 versions of the record, there are even "best-of" remix-albums. Back in winter 2008 I came across the Kid Paul Mix again when I listened to one of my old tapes ("music cassette" - do you remember?...). I wondered what the tune would sound like if I tried to play it by myself, so I produced some cover versions with variations of the beat, additional synth tracks etc. trying not to loose these good vibes and feelings of nostalgia I get every time I listen to the original (i.e.Kid Paul Mix). And I wondered how far I could take it.


The final result of this process was my own interpretation of a "Café del Mar"-Track. The working Title was Café del Mar Electric Water Remix. I renamed it to Electric Sea and put it on my SC and Youtube. This is not a cover version anymore (nor is it really a remix...), but an attempt to create something like a counter piece to "Café del Mar" from the point of view of today - i.e. "you have to fight to stay optimistic".
Remember, after the storm and all that rain the sun will always shine again.

I share the "whole story" with you. But please - except for Electric Sea which is my own track - don't go public with these cover versions (copyright hell!...)

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THE WEB - CdM remixed
1. CdM THE WEB Remix...................9:25
2. CdM THE WEB Storm Remix............10:23
3. CdM THE WEB Club Remix.............11:19
4. THE WEB - Electric Sea .............9:04
5. CdM THE WEB Chilled Remix..........10:28
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BRICO - not available, 2009


click to download CdM remixed  (mediafire)