Tuesday 29 March 2011

Jean-Jacques Smoothie '2 People'

Chart Peak: 12

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The brains behind the Plastic Raygun record label, Cardiff's Jean-Jacques Smoothie, made a huge club & chart impact with his debut single '2 People'... The Welshman enlisted the talents of acclaimed producer Mirwais for the groove-laden track - his first remix since last year's collaboration with Madonna on her Music album.
Apparently he isn't really Welsh, he's from Gloucester but he lives in Wales. Daft Punk only show up once directly on a Now! album (see my post a few days ago) but their influence is echoed in the vogue for Frenchness around the turn of the century that lead to Steve Robson adopting this stagename (a few years earlier, Stuart Price had begun calling himself Jaques Lu Cont). Mirwais is really French though, and it's his remix of the track that became the hit and features here.

The concept is simple and commonplace - a looped vocal from Minnie Riperton's naughty-but-nice 'Inside My Love' put through nots of flange. Er, no innuendo intended. Had I been listening to this album in full for two hours by this point, I'd be pretty tired of flanging by now, and even on its own this is a bit too repetitive for my liking. But it does have a certain sweetness about it, albeit inherited from the source material, which makes it a nice change from the more cynical-sounding likes of 'Flawless'.

Available on: Ministry of Sound Presents Chilled II 1991-2009

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