Nagoya Marimba // HNNY

It has been said that Steve Reich started dance music before dance music was dance music. He is often held up as the Godfather of the hypnotic minimalist repetition that is so prevalent in Techno and House today. As such, there have been numerous attempts to remix his works, whereby producers create a DJ-friendly homage to their hero. Unfortunately, the remixes often come out sounding cheesy or muddled (perhaps with the exception of Vakula’s acclaimed remix of last year.) Usually I would just rather listen to the original, but the same cannot be said of HNNYs new edit of the classic ‘Nagoya Marimba’.

Where many remixes of Reich often suffer from a lack of the mesmeric hypnotism that makes minimalism so appealing, HNNY manages to strike a perfect balance between something simultaneously anodyne and animated. It’s entirely appropriate for both beach-party nights out or solitary nights in. In the same way that listening to Steve Reich after 10 minutes can begin to make one feel strange and unearthly, HNNYs edit achieves the same progressiveness by steadily increasing more and more subtle discordant elements and harmonic nuances into the mix.

One of my favorite components of this track is the creative use of Bass Guitar, which adds a refreshing punchy quality, and helps lift it up where a conventional sub bass sine wave would have muddied the sound. This slow, chilled house groove, in combination with the live instruments almost sounds like it could be a real-time performing band, which reminds me of the likes of Stimming and Erdbeershnitzel), and shows us that 110 bpm has a lot to say for itself. On the B-side there’s an equally interesting and innovative re-edit of a Dorian Concept track, and judging how quickly the Vakula edit sold out, I doubt it will be around for long so GO BUY IT.

• Published
• Jul 31, 2012

• Credits
• Words by Georgie_McVicar