At what point do we accept cliches? PRES shows you don’t need to

At what point do we accept clichés? I’m on a train. It’s early morning I’m not really interested in who else is there. And then this bloke sits opposite. Takes out a book. On dear. It’s a Terry Pratchett novel. Then I notice the silver Celtic band ring. Typical. Then I notice the straggly beard. Then I notice his glasses are wonky. Yup. One side held together with Sellotape.

Remixing a classic track can also become a kind of musical cliché. But PRES have remixed Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come but offered something new in the process. Free download,.

The original is soulful and yearning. This remix is harder and more demanding. There’s a tech house hardness mixed with a future bass blankness to the opening. Before allowing the vocals in, the mood changes with a more deep house approach slightly softening the mood. This works because of the balance between old and new. They’ve taken the original as a starting point for a journey, not an end in itself. This leaves something vibrantly now.

I asked PRES why they chose to go for such a well-known track. They said “There are a number of reasons we chose to remix Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.” PRES lives and breathes “house” music. Deep/Tech, Soulful House with groovy beats and funky bass lines, but our musical journey’s transpired many years before we (Double-A and Shaun Cruda) began producing beats and dj-ing together. Ironically enough both of our introductions to the music business came as engineers. In June 2011 Shaun Cruda, (a Los Angles native) was touring the country as a front of house engineer, while Double-A (originally from a small town north of Detroit) would find himself assisting on a recording session with Mr. Bobby Womack. In the coming days Double-A would relay stories to Shaun that Mr. Womack had shared with him. One of the stories was about Mr. Womack’s mentor Sam Cooke and his record “A Change Is Gonna Come.” The meaning of the original record undoubtably about equality and working to overcome are values PRES hold true in our own hearts. But our want to remix and release this version came from the current state of the music industry. We just felt there is a lot of “soul” lacking in most current electronic music genres, and that a change is gonna come! We decided what better way to start the change, then to honor an American soul legend Mr. Sam Cooke by adding some fresh new PRES beats over his tune “A Change Is Gonna Come.”

And if you liked that, there’s more to PRES than remixes. Check out their Establish The Groove EP. This covers a range of styles, which isn’t surprising since their musical interests are pretty diverse. They say “From classic Chicago house, Detroit techno and the 90’s New York movement to new-school UK bass. A couple of our favorite labels currently include – Black Flag, Stacy Pullen’s label from Detroit, and Objektivity from New York founded by Dennis Ferrer.” The Establish The Groove EP includes a microhouse future bass approach exemplified by 238, which is also a free download.

~ by acidted on September 6, 2014.