The peculiar rise of Fatima Yamaha's low key electronic track "What's a Girl to Do?"

https://boilerroom.tv/fatima-yamaha-dekmantel/

"What’s A Girl To Do” begins as it means to go on and all too soon ends: a peach bruised by itself, tumbling along in earnest" says Lauren Martin in her excellent article here.

When I had initially read about it I brushed it off after listening to it but the track has an irresistible pull, the spoken word sample somehow urging you to listen to it again, and within a few weeks I was listening to it several times a day and answering texts from friends asking "what was that track again?"

I heard this twice in one night at the Panorama Bar last month (although it was a looooong night) to enormous whoops and cheers from the crown each time. How can a track so understated have reached this point? How rare is that?

Mods, Can this be moved to ILM. Is that possible?

it's pretty old at this point too, right?

2004! OG pressing going for $100 on discogs!

idgi personally

2004!

I didn't either at first. Which isn't a judgement call on whether you'll come round to it!

it's not a bad track at all, i quite like it, just surprised that it's become an anthem

jed, i'm surprised you hadn't heard it earlier as it has been huge in glasgow for over a decade. oh, i guess you've only been out to a club about twice in that time. ;-)

i still play it from time to time. last time people were stage diving to it.

o___O

" oh, i guess you've only been out to a club about twice in that time. ;-)"

Next time! And you did play a little tease of it at the panorama. I was there, remember?! :)

i did and i do!

I went to jed's own club night in 2013, it was great but I didn't see him, case closed

WHAT? I'm so sad about that.

Presumably hardly anyone plays it in its original state, like not pitched up or with anything else behind it? I mean it's pretty slow and delicate sounding. I don't think I've ever heard this on a dancefloor or in a mix or anything.

the dj haus remix is the platonic peaktime ideal of this track imo

it's in loads of mixes! it has been for a good few years now, i think someone like move d played it a lot and he had a huge cult following for a while.

i'm surprised by the scale of its revival - like it's common for old records to become popular again, there are so many mixes etc - but this is as if it's been released again or something. spotify put it in my discover weekly, insultingly.

iirc it was released again

It was reissued about six months ago

And the DJ Haus remix is completely unnecessary and not very good

<i>Presumably hardly anyone plays it in its original state</i>

they so do! as mentioned earlier, it has been huge in glasgow ever since its original release and various glaswegian djs had been playing it around the world. then hudson mohawke sampled it and word spread further. i tried to reissue it a couple of years ago but sadly didn't get anywhere. also, it had been available as a free download from the artist's bandcamp for years so was very easy to get hold of.

the DJ Haus remix is rubbish.

bb code memory fail.

u just don't know what it's supposed to be. ur stuck... does it get housier?

they so do! as mentioned earlier, it has been huge in glasgow ever since its original release and various glaswegian djs had been playing it around the world. then hudson mohawke sampled it and word spread further. i tried to reissue it a couple of years ago but sadly didn't get anywhere. also, it had been available as a free download from the artist's bandcamp for years so was very easy to get hold of.

the DJ Haus remix is rubbish.

yes to all this.

the whole album (which is p good) was free on d1's website for years. i guess when i said "it's as if it's been released again", i meant more than that - more like it's as if the re-release was its first ever release and people fiended for it like a new single.

for some reason it kinda reminds me of The The's "Giant" from Soul Mining. Call me crazy, but the length and the relentlessness and the sense that it's pop that somehow been stretched out into a longer form is why I'm saying this.

more like it's as if the re-release was its first ever release and people fiended for it like a new single.

ah i thought you might've meant this

i will hear no bad talk about dj haus!!!

Can someone point me in the direction of a mix where the original is particularly well used? Like, I like the track a lot and I can see how teasing people with it would work, but I can't really see how it would work on a dancefloor, certainly not to the extent of becoming a huge scene anthem. Maybe there's a different dynamic to Glasgow dancefloors that I'm not familiar with. The Hudson Mohawke/Jhene Aiko track basically treats it as a ballad, which I get.

i've never heard it in glasgow but it has the same sort of effect that, idk peak kompakt soft sad techno might have - it hits the same emotional spot as something like heiko voss's "i think about you" or ada's "maps", both of which are essentially ballads too. people sing along to the melodies and hug their friends

i can't imagine hating either original or haus remix, the differences are really really not what make the track special

fatima yamaha's album is really good btw, it sort of got lost in EOY shuffle but it's very lovely and as melodic as you'd expect

@ matt - it's in this, though admittedly this is a fairly wide-ranging selection: https://soundcloud.com/platform/workshop-1h30-mins-boiler-room

have heard it in a good few mixes in recent years, like it's been bubbling back up for at least two years.

think i sold copies of it in dublin when it came out - the guy who ran d1 used to come in and drop 12s into us, hope he's making a few quid from it now.

the haus remix takes everything that is great about it, i.e. the fact that it is not based around a big kick drum but is rather all about the subtlety, that hook and the emotion and annihilates the whole thing with a big boring beat. it's not even a remix really; he just stuck a doof on it and it sounds like he made it in 5 minutes. i've seen the original destroy dancefloors all over the world, even at big festivals.

all true!! but the made-in-5-minutes vibe is what i tend to like about dj haus ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

idk peak kompakt soft sad techno might have - it hits the same emotional spot as something like heiko voss's "i think about you" or ada's "maps", both of which are essentially ballads too

Yeah but for all of Kompakt's swooning, those tracks are still obviously house music, the Ada cover of Maps in particular is all about stretching out the huggy bit of the song itself and then dropping the kick at the moment of maximum euphoria. This isn't like that, like the beat is so delicate.

Will give the Workshop mix a spin later because I genuinely am curious about it.

The Haus remix is fine for what it is, retooling the track for chunkier/garagier sets where it really wouldn't work otherwise.

sometimes music goes around the corner

fwiw i.e. not much, I only heard this song from the ILM 2015 tracks poll. Was one of my favourite discoveries from that playlist (thanks forks) - had no idea until now it was a reissue!

those tracks are still obviously house music

house music doesn't rule the world.

that mayer mix of ada's "maps" cover had a really long intro - it fucking killed the dancefloor (not using "killed" as a metaphor for "enlivened) when i played it having not realised this - no beat for about 3 minutes = everyone bored and drifting away.

Echo the love of the original track. First heard it on a Kompakt mix by Jan-Eric Kaiser. Only recently found out that the same guy is in De Jeugd Van Tegenwoordig which I first heard on here.

"haus remix is fine for what it is" misses the point, it's the judicious actual good taste and chutzpah to do it in the first place that matters. the original's indie disco sofia coppola feels are really not that subtle or precious, sorry

ilm, where everything we don't like is indie

"indie sofia coppola..." - EFF OFF!

that's literally what's happening though. i like the track but it essentially lives up to its dialogue sample as an alt lost in translation score

never seen lost in translation so that doesn't hold true for me.

whoa check out fucking senor koyaanisqatsi over here

the original track sounds more like a lost instrumental from Minneapolis in the '80s or something off that minimal wave compilation, the name of which i'm totally blanking on now.

good thread btw, or at least i'm totally interested in the history of this tune.

I cannot stand the main synth on this, it sounds so cheap and rudimentary, the kind of thing bands featured on Kitsune Maison compilations use

precisely

you say that like cheap and rudimentary is a bad thing

in this context it is - the mood is meant to be wistful and tender and whatever but this synth is just so brash and ugly. I love a Kompakt introspective banger as much as anyone (barring rtc, of course) but this is just so inert and cloying.

you mean the lead sound with the vibrato?

the one that goes DO DO DOO! DOOO DO DO DO DO DOOOO DO (pitch change) DO DO DO

its like someone drew all over a watercolour with felt tip pens

house music doesn't rule the world

Blasphemy! I suppose the point I was making is that the Kompakt comparison only really holds if you maintain that Kompakt was only about the swoony stuff, and nothing to do with the propulsive grooves underpinning it. The dancefloor utility of both of the tracks Lex mentions makes sense because those tracks were obviously made with the dancefloor at least partly in mind. Whereas this track feels like it became a dancefloor anthem almost by accident, the very strangeness of that is why we're talking about it in the first place.

"haus remix is fine for what it is" misses the point, it's the judicious actual good taste and chutzpah to do it in the first place that matters. the original's indie disco sofia coppola feels are really not that subtle or precious, sorry

I can't really fathom disliking the original and enjoying the Haus version, like as far as I can tell there is literally no difference other than the beat and one tweak later on? Both beats are kind of cheap actually but on a dancefloor give me a cheap beat that thumps over one that patters on any day. (I suppose my ideal remixer for this would be Luomo 2004 or something, either that or a totally beatless stretched out version bringing out its inner Love On A Real Train).

it's in this, though admittedly this is a fairly wide-ranging selection

Pretty awesome mix, and truly "wide-ranging". Two tracks prior to the Fatimah Yahama is one of my favorite Autechre remixes

The original has a little Kelley Polar reminiscence to me but not quite as splendorous or warm as much of Love Songs Of The Hanging Gardens. Wonder if Morgan Geist played it out much/at all back then.

im not sure i can even tell whose side anyone is on in this argument

sometimes you can just listen to a song and like it or not rather than trying to work out what taste chess moves everyone else may or may not be playing

Actually replace my Luomo suggestion upthread with Morgan Geist, that's a perfect match.

Ha! Never realised that this is actually Bas Bron aka Seymour Bits.

love too taste chess

this doesn't need a remix. i mean unless you think it's shit. but if you don't.

Yes because only bad records are ever remixed, a good one has never been improved by remixing ever.

I like it, I'm just struggling to imagine its impact on a dancefloor. That Workshop mix is great but at the same time is so wide-ranging it hasn't actually left me any the wiser.

Not that I think this track is quite as incredible as some people, although it is a pretty tune, but it would be an incredibly one-note dancefloor that couldn't handle the change of pace to something like this from my point of view.

Ben Klock played the original version of this both times he played at The Dugdale Arms

sometimes you can just listen to a song and like it or not rather than trying to work out what taste chess moves everyone else may or may not be playing

― cher guevara (lex pretend), Tuesday, February 2, 2016 8:45 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah sure but we only ever get bored/irritated by this when it's being done to us.

to clarify: I feel like I'm frequently on both sides of that complaint.

Yes because only bad records are ever remixed, a good one has never been improved by remixing ever.

tbf most already-huge records tend to have bad remixes, not that it's unheard of by any means in the history of remixing for there to be good ones.

Imagine if Bob Sinclar had not remixed The Wanted's "I Found You" because he was like "no, this is already a huge record, I should leave it alone."

it's that drive to succeed, to better ourselves, that keeps humanity improving day by day.

^^^ What I really want is a house track that after six minutes of winsome synth chords gently informs me of the above.

No joke though I kinda get a bit corny fuxx about the sampled dialogue halfway through DJ Sprinkles' remix of Oh Yoko's "Seashore".

"It's so hard making sense of lives... We begin a different lifestyle completely. Maybe not exactly sure inside if the changes we're choosing are right, necessarily, even if they're right for us..."

sometimes you can just listen to a song and like it or not rather than trying to work out what taste chess moves everyone else may or may not be playing

truth nuke

E2-E4 btw.

No joke though I kinda get a bit corny fuxx about the sampled dialogue halfway through DJ Sprinkles' remix of Oh Yoko's "Seashore".

oh same, love those nypd blue feels

sometimes you can just listen to a song and like it or not rather than trying to work out what taste chess moves everyone else may or may not be playing

truth nuke

yeah we all need to learn to be more tolerant and less trenchant in our views.

i'm not anti taste chess but when you wander into a thread and seem only to be interested in other people's taste chess it's a bit "did you have an opinion with that or are you just struggling to pick whose side you feel you should be on"

the guy who ran d1 used to come in and drop 12s into us, hope he's making a few quid from it now.

I hope he does and then represses Top Pixel Action

since there wasn't an argument happening there's no need to pick sides.

This track is a way of life and much needed atm

Nu (Disco) EP:

https://open.spotify.com/album/6UHXMzvdMzsHM0qvaE7QQg

https://soundcloud.com/dkmntl/dkmntl046-fatima-yamaha-araya

Not bad actually.

definitely an example of a track an artist will never better, and possibly was a total fluke

I really like 'Piayes Beach Bar And Grill' (find the synth melody towards the end so nearly naff but actually charming), possibly more than WAGTD, although wouldn't really expect anyone else to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ralup5u3OA

Under the Fatima Yamaha alias maybe but dude produced a metric ton of classic tracks as Bastian/DJVT/Seymour Bits/etc.

Nice track but it loses me when the "lead" synth comes in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu6G1d1r89I

so as it stands: DJ Haus version >>>>>>>> this >> the original