Roni Size's debut album "New Forms" hit a ton of milestones in drum and bass when it was first released in 1997, especially when it came to album sales and the number of casual listeners it exposed an entirely different genre of music to for the very first time. Many of the keynote tracks from the LP were released as 12" singles which featured a flurry of remixes by well respected artists both inside and outside of drum and bass. Some of these singles (such as "Brown Paper Bag") sold very well, and others went by un-noticed (many of the "Heros" remixes come to mind). About a year ago I did a write-up on Nuyorican Soul's epic 14-minute remix of "Watching Windows", however the best version of this track has to go to Bristol producer DJ Die.
Die released two versions of Watching Windows; one version was very common while the Gnarly version (featured here) was not only widely considered far superior, but also a much harder record to find as it was only printed in an extremely limited quantity and never repressed. (Although in 2010 it's a bit easier to find on the second hand market with many people selling their vinyl collections than it was 6-8 years ago). There are basically two "drop" parts in this track that build this song up perfectly: the amen break that enters at around the two-minute mark, and the centerpiece bassline about 40 seconds later. I don't doubt that the "Gnarly" reference refers to the twisted sinister nature of the low end here!
There were two versions of the Gnarly mix on this 12": the vocal version which includes Onallee's vocals, and the instrumental version, which is exactly the same but without the vocals. As the original version has already been posted on youtube a ton of times, I figured I'd post the instrumental for the hell of it as I don't see it here.
26 май 2010
