This Week in House Music: Claptone with Monkey Safari, Emerald with HAAi & Inner City
Last week was a lot, and I definitely could use a good soul-shaking and anger releasing in the form of aggressively dancing around my apartment. If you can relate, we have one new track and one classic track to lift the spirits and an energetic three-hour rave mix to exercise all the emotional demons.
Best New Track: Claptone feat. lau.ra - Beautiful (Monkey Safari Remix) (Different Recordings, May 6)
Berlin-based birdman Claptone released his critically-acclaimed third studio album last year, Closer. With each passing month, he's revealed a
string of A-list remixes, most recently "Beautiful," featuring vocals from British artist lau.ra. The latest remix package features three different versions, with the Monkey Safari edit raising the BPM and adding an upbeat disco-tinged house beat. The German deep house brother duo chop and distort lau.ra's vocals but keep the positive vibe of the track sending it for a spin under the disco ball.
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Best New Mix: The Dance Show with Emerald feat. HAAi – 06 May 2022
On Friday, Rinse FM DJ Emerald debuted her new weekly, The Dance Show, on the impactful British (formerly pirate) radio station, Rinse FM. The three-hour mix is pure sweaty dance floor energy and features a superb selection of new, unreleased, and classic rave tracks, with banging bass a key tenant of the London DJ's beloved sounds. The stellar new show includes her current "ride-or-die" tunes she's been rinsing (including Lauren Flax's "Sweat" and Manifesto's "Big Rooms"). She's also picked out a label to spotlight each month. This time it's Ninja Tune, and one of the tracks we hear is the soon-to-drop "Can We Still Be Friends" by Barry Can't Swim and Laurence Guy. In the guest mix slot is rising rave queen HAAi in the program's last hour.
The lengthy set reverberates with 100 percent bangers that traverse the diverse sounds of what you might hear, setting London's clubs off.
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Best Classic Track: "Big Fun," Inner City (1988, Virgin Records)
In 1988, Detroit techno forefather Kevin Saunderson released a globally chart-topping house classic, "Big Fun," his first single as Inner City with vocalist Paris Grey. "I wasn't even thinking about hits at that time. It was really about 'Is this something that could be played in the Paradise Garage?'" Saunderson told Mixmag about the joyful hit in 2020. "In reality, 'Big Fun' was the new disco, just modernized with technology that became techno." In 2017, Saunderson revived the project with his son Danitez and dropped Inner City's fourth studio album, We All Move Together.
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