ts: freemasons vs alan braxe

hmm: freemasons control the banks, the FBI, the CIA, the military, the television and radio stations and the world economy

alan braxe controls the dance.

i think maybe freemasons take this one.

Alan Braxe
Real Name: Alain Quême
Profile: Alain Quême first jumped on to the scene with "Vertigo", released under Thomas Bangalter’s label Roulé. His alias (Alan Braxe) is an homage to his home town in France. Along with Thomas Bangalter and Benjamin Diamond, Alain produced the biggest dance track in electronic music’s history. Stardust’s "Music Sounds Better with You" was an instant hit, and they made a music video to go along with it. If you watched music networks at all in 1998 or 1999, you would have seen it several times a week.
He is the cousin of DJ Falcon (Stephane Quême) and Quartet (Delphine Quême).

!!
:0

anyway, the freemasons are from the uk and look like cunts

http://a911.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/01461/01/92/1461462910_m.jpg

so braxe wins

what are some good tracks from these freemason dudes

Braxe has Vertigo, yes.

But the Freemasons have Love on my Mind, Rain Down Love and Atlantic/Pacific, so on bona fide classics, that's 3-1 to the Freemasons. Plus they seem to come from a less po-faced but equally knowing take on the heitage of house music.

Agreed,however, that they look like cunts.

Anyhow, Atlantic/Pacific is an incredible piece of music - it combines the following: Early 90s Strictly Rhythm, Papua New Guinea, Strings of Life, and Pacific State (the former and latter giving the track its title, I'm summising)in a fully reverential, non cheesy and innovative way - check it out and be bowled over. My favourite full-on groovy house act since Mood II Swing...

erm, that was "heritage"

Anyhow, Atlantic/Pacific is an incredible piece of music

Got hold of this on the strength of Iain's praise and it gave me hair-on-neck shivers on the way to work this morning. It's completely brilliant and the fact that I didn't realise *that riff* was coming in the final 1/3 made it even more so.

Great recommendation, cheers!

yeah i did too, and it's truly excellent

if you all like this sort of thing you should check out SEAMUS HAJI, his mixes are killer (especially the MoS mix)

maybe even AXWELL if you're a total fiend

crucial seamus haji mix!

wow i gotta hear this 'Atlantic/Pacific'

one of them was in Phats & Small :D

Not to mention all of Freemasons worldshaking remixes - "Mesmerised"! "Ring the Alarm"! No-one does massive diva house remixes of R&B tracks like they do.

Freemasons: singlehandedly making gay clubs palatable since 2004.

my girlfriend loves their remix of Shakira/Beyoncé

it is pretty good I have to admit. especially compared to the woeful pabulum of the original.

Ronan please don't use that word, it makes you sound like Alex in NYC!

that was obviously the reason I said it! nobody has ever used it except Alex and those impersonating him!

i kept thinking of the Freeloaders who did that terrible 'So Much Love To Give' rip. or the Freestylers.

so this is the best dance act with Free in the title probably yeah.

Sorry perhaps I was in a dense/humorless mood last night.

Anyway, Freemasons!

The "Beautiful Liar" and "Deja Vu" remixes are both great, very lush and full-sounding which I guess is the production signature for this stuff (in a lot of ways it sounds to me like a throwback to all those big dancefloor anthems circa 2001/2002 - "Take Me With You", "At Night", "The Terrace" - crossed with the more typical phased disco sound), and what these guys do which I can't even break down properly is mess with the speed of the vocals in the exact perfect way - usually I dislike the way that the vocals are stretched out/sped up on these kinds of remixes ('cos it's enough to make them sound awkward but not enough to make them sound interesting), but the Freemasons vocals always sound as good or better than the original. But I class them on a rung below "Mesmerised" (the classic) and "Ring the Alarm", which really was quite a revelation to hear in the club (I need to find my Stalinist historical materialism explanation for this one).

I mean, if nothing else, what the "Ring the Alarm" remix does which is just amazing is to totally redeem not just the category of "extended club remix of pop songs for gay clubs", but its very form and structure. Everything about this eight and half minute monstrosity is perfectly: the punishing shouty intro, the verse, the string-riff-laden chorus, the instrumental breaks, the long rousing run to the finish line... It just wouldn't work as well if it was even a moment shorter.

I don't think it's possible to fully appreciate this achievement unless you've been forced to listen to unnecessarily long, ideas-devoid extended club mixes of pop songs that somehow manage to suck out anything that was enjoyable about the original, on as many nights as I have.

as a barometer how do you like what Booty Luv did to Tweet's 'Boogie 2Nite' Tim? i take it the stuff you're talking about is on a significantly higher level than that.

The "Boogie 2Nite" remix wasn't awful, but it didn't add anything to the original I thought. It's a different case though i guess - "Boogie 2Nite" had always been huge among house DJs so I thought the Booty Luv version was a bit redundant. But it's a much more polite and less radical reworking than one the Freemasons are doing on these tracks (I don't think this says anything about the Freemasons in particular though - most club mixes of R&B tracks are "radical reworkings", for good or for ill).

The Seamus Haji remix of "Boogie 2Nite" was good I guess. but, contra vahid, I'd say what can hold Haji back from Freemasons-level greatness is that he's stuff is very "does what is says on the tin": effective, very large-sounding electro-tinged house tracks and remixes, but I can't remember ever being surprised by him. Also I suspect he steals some of his ideas from Freemasons anyway! That "Tainted Love" style single-note beep he uses on so many productions is straight from the "Mesmerised" remix.

I should check out his MoS DJ mix though.

The other way to look at this stuff is that it's the "big room" populist version of my beloved Mei Lwun mix.

the 'green light' rmx is a bit blah.

maybe even AXWELL if you're a total fiend

i looooved this, what else has he done that's good

freemasons = summer jams

oh come on, tim, i have trouble believing that you were *SURPRISED* by "ring the alarm" but you got no appreciation for haji's work.

i'll admit that "ring the alarm" has an edge on most haji stuff but i'm sure if he'd been handed the beyonce source material he'd have turned a similar trick.

The only version of their Green Light mix I've heard is of fairly poor quality, so I'll hold off judging until an HQ version leaks.

Another amazing Freemasons mix is their mix of Alibi vs. Rockefeller's (sp?) "Sexual Healing" cover. I really wish they had been given clearance to remix with Marvin's vocals...it would have been even more amazing.

"oh come on, tim, i have trouble believing that you were *SURPRISED* by "ring the alarm" but you got no appreciation for haji's work."

I do have appreciation for Haji's stuff! He and Axwell (and occasionally Sebastian Ingrosso) are pretty much the only reliable producers of post-Subliminal house. But Freemasons have an edge for me.

ok, then :)

but i'll be honest and admit that i like haji's dj and selections better than i like his productions, per se

he's got nothing to do w/ some of the best stuff on there, like the major boys "galaxy" (totally swoonsome mix of "take me with you" and "discopolis")

I'm very fond of the Haji "Umbrella" remix, especially how he injects short Jay-Z snippets at various points. But neiher he nor the Freemasons are taking many risks in what they do, as opposed to Braxe.

"extended club remix of pop songs for gay clubs"

I'm not buying that this is for the gay crowd - at least on the continent/scandinavia if you program this music on a club night you'll get the hetero-female crowd in, not the gay scene.

Maybe it's just that gay clubs are close to the only clubs I go to that combine "bad taste" populism with actual, you know, extended club tracks - as opposed to R&B/hip hop/pop.

It just wouldn't work as well if it was even a moment shorter.

This also applies to their own work. The extended versions of both "Love on my Mind" and "Rain Down Love" are vastly superior to the radio edit versions. The breakdown to just the rhythm track in the middle of "Love on My Mind" (which is not in the radio edit version) is one of the great moments in all of music... (I exaggerate not)

I've heard 'Ring The Alarm' enough times without knowing who did the remix so thanx. It's some mad, heady melodrama eh.

I suppose they are funky house classicism. I like them better than new-Van Helden. They are maybe a bit like Lu Cont in the way the pop song isn't diminished by increased trackiness.

That's a good comparison point actually. Maybe Lu Cont song structure meets Joey Negro sonics?

I'll give you that the extended mix of Love On My Mind is much better than the radio edit, but the radio edit of Rain Down Love works much better than the extended mix (if we're talking the Walken edit here).