When RA tried to make some sense of re-edits earlier in the year, it seemed that no one could agree on much. However, if there is a point of consensus amongst aficionados, it might be that Justin Vandervolgen is bloody good at them. His cut-ups as Try To Find Me and as part of TBD have been some of the most celebrated in the scene. As you might guess, this latest instalment delivers in spades.
The source material on "EditChannel" is Bobby Thurston's "You Got What It Takes," originally released as the B-side to the hugely popular, "Check out the Groove." It's likely "You Got What It Takes" may be sitting in your Dad's dusty record collection. However, it's just as likely that you've overlooked it. While most disco editors head for pop hits or willfully obscure pieces, JV operates within a curious middle ground. Major label records that may have been minor hits at one time, but have now been largely forgotten. It's the same method he employed on Try To Find Me's "Get to My Baby," an edit that worked wonders with Johnnie Taylor's dollar-bin special, "She's Killing Me."
To be fair, Vandervolgen's not done much to the original here. (Perhaps that's why this is not an official Try To Find Me or Golf Channel release?) Reverb's been added, the groove's been elongated and the corny falsetto has been wiped away. The makeover's economic but the end result is a track with serious dance floor credentials. Maybe it's Vandervolgen's working methods—he's gone on record before saying he doesn't use Ableton—but the record seems to retain a pleasing un-quantised fluidity. There's a proper disco feel at work here, something that's a little indefinable, but it's what makes EditChannel stand head and shoulders above the hundreds of disco edits churned out every month.
Tracklist: Justin Van Dervolgen - EditChannel XXX
A EditChannel XXX
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