This week sees the release of two fine-tuned retrospectives on V as dRamatic and dbAudio and Cabbie and Origin have both taken on the huge challenge of remixing Krust’s time-defining roller Guess. Two completely different remakes, two winning hype tracks that will take all knowledgeable crowds back 17 years in an instant. We rang the originator Krust to get his take on things…
“Remixes can be real problems!” he laughs. “Especially with classic tunes. People try and put their interpretations on it. Even keeping the same spirit of the original can be a good or bad thing. Sometimes it’s great to have that familiarity and other times it demands something more different so you can actually call it a remix. These ones have got the balance just right, I love them both.”
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEHBUwnVisw
Cabbie & Origin Mix: Listen and download
dRamatic & dbAudio Mix: Listen and download
Congratulations to both dRamatic and dbAudio and Cabbie and Origin, then. Although they knew that already… Bryan Gee wouldn’t even have called Krust on them if he didn’t think they were respectful. What’s more interesting, is Krust’s take on how much the industry has changed in the 17 years that have passed since the original came our way.
“It was a whole world away, production-wise,” he muses. “All I had was an Atari 760 and that was it. Maybe a sampler and a Moog. That’s it. I had to know how to use Cubase and how to use a sampler and there wasn’t any internet or social networking so there weren’t so many distractions! I had all day, every day to learn my tools inside out. Now you’ve got to learn the programs, you’ve got learn the mixdowns, you’ve got to learn the software. Everything needs to be instant. We need to have it now. No one can wait! That’s what we’re dealing with.”
Now passing on his years of industry knowledge in colleges across the UK, Krust’s current crusade is one against the X-Factor generation where supposed instant gratification and immediate stardom appear attainable for anyone who can muster a melody or sequence the right sounds.
“People don’t realise the long game!” he sighs. “You have to put all the steps in place if you want a long career. Or even a career at all. Let me tell you, it took Full Cycle ten years to build up before we were even releasing stuff. We’d been making music for eight or nine years before anything got released! Sometimes there’s a general consensus that if you’re making music then you’re going to be successful. There’s more studios, more colleges – everyone wants to do it because they think it’ll happen overnight. It ain’t gonna happen.”
Thankfully there’s a silver lining to this gloomy gratified cloud. There might be more opportunities for young producers to explore their talents, there’s definitely more people fighting for a chance under the spotlight as a result… But Krust believes the chances for success have never been better.
“Of course!” he laughs. “It’s even easier now than it ever has been. The more people are doing the same sound, the easier it is to stand up and do your own thing! Be unique. Find something that separates you from everyone else. That’s the only thing! You see now we’re in the business of music, we’re not in the music business. Everyone’s too fussed up on getting the tracks out there to the right people, who hears them, what category it’s in, how they’re marketed and so on. It doesn’t have to be about that – it’s about the graft and keeping true to what you want to do.”
In terms of Krust’s own graft you can expect to hear a whole new project called George Kurks coming soon. And if you’re in London tonight you can catch him at Plastic People for Neighbourhood as he takes things way back to 1997 with a batch of tunes he recently unearthed on DAT. Criminally they’ve never seen the light of day!
“Ah it’s just a lot of stuff Die, Roni and I did,” he shrugs as if unheard Full Cycle material is a small matter. “We just never got round to releasing them!”
Now that’s what we call playing the long game! Catch Krust on Twitter and download the new remixes of Guess right here.