Showtime. Get your collective asses over to Beatport for the second slice:
Home > Labels > Nettwerk > Rose Of Jericho Part 2
Same as before: $7.47 for the release of three tracks @ $2.49, plus $1.00 each if you want them in WAV.
With no original mix to steal the show and two subpar remixes on the table, expectations are a little different this time around. So what’s the damage? Let’s find out.
Adam K & Soha Remix - Three weeks ago I said:
You’re still in progressive house territory, albeit the electrohouse variant. [...] It’s decent stuff, but painfully trendy. These are the guys you call when Deadmau5 is on tour, Glenn Morrison isn’t available, and you don’t want to deal with Pryda. Not to say this doesn’t have incredible potential—I anticipate something that will compliment a middle set nicely. I may even spin it myself.
What you’re getting: Faxing Berlin with a BT melody.
And… tada! That’s pretty much what we have. It’s lush. They added enough of a completely new melody and used so little of the original one that you’ll either love it or hate it. In all fairness, it’s a standalone track in its own right. Nothing groundbreaking, but fantastic mid-set material just as I anticipated. Of all the Rose of Jericho remixes, this one is far and away my favorite.
Virtual Vault Remix - I said:
These guys are fairly new, and bring absolutely nothing unique to the table. What we have here is another trance act, completely indistinguishable from everyone else producing the same things using the same software, patches and sounds. [...] Will every trance DJ and their cousins play it? Of course. But it’s still fodder.
Again, exactly what we’ve got here. I give these guys credit up to the point that it’s not as repulsive as their other work, and not quite the spectacular trainwreck of Robbie Rivera’s first remix, but that’s still not saying much. It’s blandly uninspired and ultimately forgettable. 6:25 running time, with leads? That’s barely enough material to even qualify as a track. Enjoy the 15 minutes while it lasts, guys, and be grateful that Tiesto pulled a favor to get you on here in the first place.
And now, back to Robbie Rivera for a much-undeserved round 2 - I said:
The Afterhours mix may have some potential, since a title like that usually implies a chill pill of some kind.
There’s nothing afterhours about this mix at all—it’s a stripped down, thumping, worse version (somehow?) of Sultan and Shepard’s marvel of monotony. STAB. STABSTAB. STABSTABSTAB. transition. STAB. Not even a pitch change. Could this possibly be any more passé?
The presence of split releases and their tracklistings always makes me giggle uncontrollably, because there’s always one thing VERY readily apparent: The label knew going in which remixes were hot, which ones sucked, and split them accordingly. In a not-so-subtle slight, Adam K & Soha headlined Part 2 in order to buoy the sales of an otherwise worthless release. Ditto Part 1, where the original mix was the primary draw with a few people picking up Sultan & Shepard’s mix along the way. Ideally and stylistically, Robbie should have been dropped from Part 1 in favor of Adam K & Soha. That would have been a solid, quality 3-track single release. The problem is—and Nettwerk and Black Hole both knew this—a single with two mixes by Robbie Rivera and one by Virtual Vault will sell to (no pun intended) virtually no one. Something had to give, because someone actually made the decision to pay Robbie and Virtual Vault to do these in the first place. Sadly enough, there were probably people around willing to do better work for free.
Since Beatport graciously offers line-item veto, I highly recommend snapping up the Adam K & Soha Remix as soon as possible, and deftly ignoring the other two.
