The name Simon Dunmore comes up quite a few times when you search this blog. He’s mentioned a few times both in a critical and favourable manner – hardly surprising for a man with his power and influence in the house music scene.
He currently runs Defected and has done since 1999. Before that, he worked at AM:PM Records and even earlier, Cooltempo. So when he speaks, the scene tends to listen. Here’s what he tweeted this morning..
And for context, here is the current top 10 at the time of writing.
It appears Mr Dunmore is correct. The Fog’s “Been A Long Time” came out in 1993. Siedah Garrett’s song originally came out in 1985 and “Happy People” dates back to 1999.
Elsewhere, Maurice Joshua and Joyce Hurley’s song at number 5 was originally released in 2014, and the number 10 entry is a remake of D-Train’s song from 1982 – and quite a good one, incidentally.
I’m all in favour of remixes, of course. I do plenty of them. But I can’t help but worry the balance in dance music, particularly house, is all wrong at the moment. Barely a week currently goes by when the likes of Easy Street or King Street are releasing remixes of tracks from their archives.
How is new music supposed to thrive with all these remixes around of old records? And why is it always the same old names that seem to be involved? This just makes it even harder for up and coming talent than it already is.
And if you absolutely must remix old records, at least try to do something that hasn’t been done to death already…
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