SSOL - SSOL 001

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  • Cutting up a big disco track with a house beat is as unoriginal as dance music gets. It's the closest thing house music has to a jazz standard. A "Kind Of Blue" for fans of fist pumping. At this stage if you're going to attempt this kind of thing you better do it bloody well. As it happens, Frank Timm, AKA Soundstream, can not only pull it off—he can get results with well-worn source material. As SSOL, a new alias, Timm take the scissors to Instant Funk's "Got My Mind Made Up" and Skyy's "First Time Around," both disco staples released on the revered Salsoul label. In the case of the latter, it's already been reworked by Kenny Dope, Larry Levan, Mike Delgado, Tim Deluxe and John Morales, to name but a few. Here Timm's arrangement isn't that remarkable: he's simply looped sections into funky one-bar rounds and chopped out a chunk of the first verse. Yet somehow the rawness of the drums, particularly the way the hi-hats slam in, gives it an energy that's tough not to love. The flip is hardly revolutionary either. It's just looped sections of a ubiquitous disco classic, one that was popularised by multi-million selling hip-hop act De La Soul. But again, the killer drums make it better than it should have any right to be. The EP doesn't quite hit the dizzy heights of the music Timm produces with more mysterious samples, but he again nails the formula better than most.
  • Tracklist
      A Track 1 B Track 2
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