Beat This
Alter Ego - Beat The Bush (Ewan Pearson's Slow NRG Remix)
Unbelievable. This has been sitting on my desk for a few weeks at least, yet I totally let the release-date slip past me without posting from it. Well, here you go.
Alter Ego is the dangerous techno duo of Roman Flügel & Jörn Elling Wuttke, who, in 1993 with the help of DJ ATA and Heiko Mso, formed a triumvirate of highly influential German techno labels Ongaku, Klang Elektronik and Playhouse. Flügel and Wuttke have been working as AE since the mid-90s, releasing their first LP to much acclaim in 1994 on the Harthouse label... Let a handful of releases and a few years pass: This leads us to their 2004 album Transphormer, and its lead single "Rocker", which was released and licensed to many labels around Europe and the world, and is considered by many to be one of the best techno songs from last year. Which makes sense because the song is a classic: a real burner, with a chugging beat, insane synths and heavily filtered guitars.
Another single from Transphormer, this song has been around for a minute, originally released as a single this past May on 12" (which also featured a killer Tiefschwarz remix), but now all the remixes, B-sides, and many of the influential remixes Alter Ego have done of other people's work is available as Transphormed - a 2-CD collection of epic proportions with remixes by Solvent, Isolée, Villalobos, and Riton (among others), and remixes of Human League, Primal Scream, 2Raumwohnung, Chicks on Speed, and Tiefschwarz. Yikes - seriously this is the hotness when it comes to techno and (it gets called a number of things, but let's go with the term) "electro-house" stuff.
This mix is by seminal remixer and techno tastemaker, Ewan Pearson. His take on this song is a to turn it to a slow-burner - a method he's been working with recently, and one I heartily agree with: taking songs down to 120BPM or lower and bringing a little slow-jam disco swagger to the mix. Dig it. Also, his rediculous looking mix CD, which is the first of the Sci.Fi. Hi.Fi. series for Soma Recordings, was recently released to much acclaim, and is worth looking into.
Anywho, if you're feeling this track and like a bit of the dark electro-house-tech vein that Alter Ego work in, please do yourself the favor of getting your hands on Transphormed - it was released on Halloween (spooky!) by Klang, and is available to buy from Forced Exposure (US), Boomkat (UK), and direct from the label.
Oh, and bonus points here for Klang Elektronik for putting two live videos (of "Daktari" and "Rocker") on the discs. Awesome, period.
Happy weekend!