This is the first post in what will hopefully turn into a series (if we don't get sued. lol.) of remixes and other stuff that was commissioned but never released for whatever reason. Out in palm springs last weekend me, Ron, Emily and some of our new friends were hanging out by the pool, this song came on my itunes, and we were like,"wow this didn't turn out so bad after all!" so we thought we'd share it with y'all since now it's a few years later and like pase says "she's pretty much irrelevant at this point."
This was a mix that I got asked to do in the fall of '06 by Lily Allen's people for her big song at the time"Smile." The song overall had some pretty good lyrics etc. but I wasn't totally sure about the music or what I could really contribute to it, 95 bpm not being one of my strongest areas. So I asked Darko to come over to help me brainstorm a quick idea up, and we ended up knocking the whole remix out in about 6 hours.
After flipping through my 90-100 bpm'd serato crate for a few minutes, we decided to do a little interpolation of the first few bars of "I'm your puppet," especially the bells part which worked well with her melody line. We replayed all the parts, added some breathy vocals of our own, for extra flair, wrote some new changes for the chorus, and turned it in. Initially I had high hopes, we got paid, the label loved it, BUT, apparently Lily hated it, so no biggie, I figured it would be shit-canned for good. About a month later we heard Mark Ronson's, or rather, Wale's remix, of "Smile" which sounded an awful lot like "I'm your puppet" too! haha looks like great minds think alike! (or at least do remixes by beat matching the two songs in serato and then replaying the samples!)lol. well anyway, without further ado here's our version:
Smile (XXXchange & Darko version)- Lily Allen
p.s. check out my old man in the pic with this "have a nice day" gravestone he carved.
We tried recording the "chime/bells" live, using wine glasses filled with different amounts of water. After wasting an hour or more, not getting the right tones and breaking a few glasses... Alex just replayed them on his keyboard in 2 minutes.
So, if your at one of Alex's dinner parties and you notice that theres more wine then glasses... thats the reason!
She was shrewish as hell when I met her. I asked why the kids didn't cheer much at her big London to do at The Astoria. I thought the kids were her bread and butter, they didn't even seem to know the words, what's the deal...?
It's not like I came up like some fanatic either, I was just a Canadian dude who had partied with her before and drinks with the bass player from her opening band.
She said rude shit about her fans, bragged about how much money she was making and was butting her smokes on a really nice hotel carpet.
The point is, thanks for the great instrumental.
This remix is amazing. I don't know that you guys can do any wrong at this point.
U can't get sued if your not making any money off it...just a cease and desist right?! hahaha... what the fuck do i know!!!
-D
oh wait... since you already got paid... you prolly signed some contract stating they own it etc. etc. oh yeah.... haha... doubt they will sue u though with 318 downloads... meh.. who knows. why am i still typing?
any chance the beck nausea remix can be the next instalment in stuff that never got released?
YES BECK NAUSEA ...alex COME ON!!!!!!
Link dead please can you re-up it.
Laters
LINK FIXED.
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