One of my all-time favorite tunes by Chic, “At Last I Am Free” has come to haunt me of late… so I remixed it. Already a long and elegant track on the C’est Chic LP, in my hands “At Last” becomes an epic lament. I thoroughly re-arranged the original, used loops of instrumental portions of the tune to create longer breaks, and did a little overdubbing with vocoder and isolated samples of Alfa Anderson’s lead vocal for added spice. This elegy is an cleaned-up and edited version of the initial mix I made–that one was just way too long, while a slow dance version I also manufactured sounded just too bizarre. P.S.: Luther Vandross is among the background vocalists, Andy Schwartz played the piano.

A remix I made of an old jazz tune performed by Tony Scott on clarinet and Shinichi Yuize on koto. The original version (which appears on Scott’s 1964 LP Music For Zen Meditation And Other Joys) moves rapidly from an initial statement of the theme by Yuize into improvisational interplay between clarinet and koto. It has always struck me as a beautiful, if not particularly meditative song, as the improvisation tends to command the listener’s attention. In this mix I cut poor Mr. Scott out entirely so as to simplify the song and provide a focus on the gentler qualities of the koto theme. I cut, loop and process the opening koto statement into a full song in its own right.

A remix I made one night of a song from Rita Marley’s excellent 1980 LP, Who Feels It Knows It.Recorded while her husband was dying of cancer, “I’m Still Waiting” is a poignant cover version of an old Wailers tune.

I suppose the first question might be “Why?” My aunt played these guys all the time back when I was a kid in the 1970s, and this track’s intro groove has always stuck in my mind. So, here we are decades later with a remix I did using MAGIX to overdub some additional percussion, and MixMeister to cut up the original into funkier form.An ode to hedonism from a man who died of it….

This song (and accompanying album) were a dream come true for me in that almost the entire project is mixed by Francois Kevorkian, one of the first and best remix producers. My re-edit of “Personal Jesus” uses elements of three different versions originally mixed by FK to create a much longer take on the album version while remaining faithful to it in structure. This track was first produced using reel-to-reel tape back in 1994 during spring break while I was in grad school. It then spent several years on cassette tape before being transferred to CD, so there are some sound quality issues.

This is a re-edit I made using the vocal and dub versions of “Plane Love,” originally mixed by Larry Levan for release on 12″ single. Written by one the great songwriters of the disco/post-disco era, “Hawk” Wolinski, “Plane Love” is a catchy soul tune transformed by Levan into one of the definitive moments of ’80s dance music. Levan’s dub mix is particularly impressive, and my re-edit uses that version for its basic structure, blending in elements of the vocal remix. My first re-edit of “Plane Love” was made on cassette tape back in 1984, and this version–put together a decade later using the same 12″ single and reel-to-reel tape–mimics that earlier mix. This second re-edit then spent a few years back on cassette tape before I was able to transfer it to a CD, so there is some noise in the mix.

A re-edit I made of LKJ’s “Reggae Sounds,” from his Bass Culture album. The mix uses both the original album version and the dub mix found on LKJ In Dub.

One several extended versions of LKJ tunes I put together using the original vocal and dub mixes.

Back in 1984 Eurythmics released an EP of remixes from their album “Touch.” This track, “Cool Blue,” was originally remixed by John “Jellybean” Benitez, and here I simply blend together portions of his vocal and instrumental mixes.

The best-known single from Carl MacIntosh’s group, with vocals by CJ & Jane Eugene.This is a pretty basic re-edit on my part, extending instrumental passages here and there.Oddly enough, this track only appeared on a re-release of the album over a full year after it first came out.