Millions of Moments, 2008
This 12-inch came out a couple of months ago, but it’s too good to skip covering. The original track, by Aaron Carl, is deep house originally released on Mike Banks’ Soul City label in 1996. After an a cappella introduction, reversed vocals and plenty of reverb add an experimental edge to simple piano and bass. Quantec’s remix pulls the vocals down into dub techno territory, with a nice deep bass pulse. Synth stabs echo as is their wont.
The real masterpiece here is Rod Modell’s “Like A River Remix.” Modell takes the tiniest vocal snippet and turns it into a hypnotic chant which pans and filters over twelve minutes. It’s a simple enough idea, but it’s intoxicating in its execution. Unfortunately both copies I have suffer from a few strange digital pops which seem unintentional. Nonetheless, vocals are used so rarely in dub techno tracks, it really is refreshing to hear the combination.