Never one to shy away from shoehorning in a theme, however tenuous the link, here are some 2024 releases relating to sleep.
Peirons has remixed Eels' 2004 song I Need Some Sleep, mashing it with a video edit of Steve Cutts' 2017 animated short Happiness (you can see the original version here), adding some Italian rapping (presumably his own) over the top. I love it all.
There was a time when I would buy anything that had Moby's name on, whether his own albums or singles, or his remixes for everyone from The B-52's to Metallica, Aerosmith to O.M.D. That time is long past, but I do occasionally dip into his new releases.
Moby's umpteenth album, Always Centered At Night, came out in June. I referenced it in a post about lead-in single Dark Days back in March...and then it completely passed me by.
An album of remixes - 58 of them! - has emerged this month, good value at $25 but again not on my essential purchase list. However, Prins Thomas offers up a couple of remixes of Should Sleep which I was immediately drawn to.
The 5-minute Diskomix appeared on a previous single release, but this is the first time I've heard the 9-minute Extended Mix and it's the pick of the two for me. Both feature J.P. Bimeni's vocals left pretty much intact and used to great effect.
Several tracks from Kito Jempere aka Kirill Sergeev's Part Time Chaos Part Time Calmness have featured in previous posts and selections. The album has marked an evolution in the Russian's musical journey, moving away from the house music that established him into a much broader span of styles and genres. Sleeping With The TV On is more of a jump than a (quantum) leap, but it's an intriguing 4 minutes of samples and beats.
Branching out from Rheinzand, hubby and wife duo Charlotte & Reinhard dropped the Guardian Of Sleep EP as a prescursor to a full length album. Sensuous, sexy disco... it ticks all the boxes.
Sensuous, sexy disco is not a phrase that you would use to describe a song by Field Music and I'm not about to start now. However, they've got a song called The Guardian Of Sleep which appeared on their latest album Levels Of Language in October. And it's one of their funkier ones, for sure. That bassline!
Another artist that I've revisited this year via a new album is Denmark's finest, Hess Is More. The album CÆKE is a sparse, minmalist treat, packed with melodies and nonchalant vocals, and Are You Sleeping is a prime example. Difficult to resist humming or whistling along to any of these, which is recommendation enough, surely?
But for those of you who can't sleep, rest assured that pretty much every week of the year, some have-a-go, would-be superstar DJ will post yet another remix of Insomnia by Faithless.
December's offering is by DJ Coruja from Brazil. Whereas most contemporary remixers seem obsessed with upping the BPMs, dropping 'mad' breaks and adding far too many bells, whistles and parps than the brain can hope to process, this one happily goes the other way.
Lifting an electro rhythm - I'd like to say with confidence that it's Scorpio by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, but I'm not sure - the rest is positively restrained and, better still, complements Maxi Jazz's sublime vocal delivery throughout. At 11 minutes, it's more than a match for the original version and might be a tad too long, but it's head and shoulders above any of the other efforts that I've heard this year.