As the centerpiece Defected Croatia festival wraps up for another year today, Ears To The House has been taking a look at the label’s socials – a crucial tool in their artillery these days. Unsurprisingly, they’re absolutely full of pictures, videos and stories from the past six days – but a few things do strike us.
Firstly, we observed the sheer volume of DJs playing at the festival nowadays. Testament to how Defected Croatia has grown over the past few years, undoubtedly – but also testament to the festival becoming more like its commercial counterparts? We also noticed the music in the videos being uploaded is changing too – with more emphasis on artists current releases and classics too.
Next thing to mention is the fact the most shared video from the event is currently one of someone dancing at a boat party with a plunger – as we covered yesterday. And finally, there’s this curious photo of Danny Tenaglia embracing label boss Simon Dunmore – thankfully without Tenaglia’s massive trunk in tow…
This photo just raises more questions than answers for us – because the relationship between these two men is a little more complicated than things appear here. Tenaglia has been involved with Defected since their early days – indeed, Ears To The House understands Simon Dunmore personally commissioned several remixes from Tenaglia during his time at AM:PM Records in the 1990s.
But in Defected’s entire 23-year history, Tenaglia has only appeared on the label roster once – and this was all the way back in 2001. Tenaglia provided two remixes of “Finally” by Kings Of Tomorrow and Julie McKnight. Pretty much everyone at HQ remembers the first time they heard Tenaglia’s Return To Paradise mix of the song – so whatever Dunmore had to pay, we think it was worth it.
However, Tenaglia has never provided a release to the label nor remixed anything since. Quite why is unclear. We also understand that around ten years ago, Defected wanted to do a Danny Tenaglia edition of their House Masters series – but as you might already have noticed, it doesn’t exist.
The same happened in March 2006 after Dunmore flew to New York to “to try to persuade him to compile and mix Danny Tenaglia – In The House. I walked away thinking it was a done deal… but for a number of reasons, it never came to be”. So what happened?
We don’t know why the latter didn’t happen, but a source close to Defected was able to give us an insight into why the House Masters compilation didn’t happen. According to them, “it basically came down to money. Tenaglia didn’t own some of his masters at the time, which pushed the licensing costs up – and seeing most of his famous remixes were for major labels, the licensing costs there was just crazy money”.
Dunmore has frequently booked Tenaglia to play at his events since Defected’s early days – but given the company’s business model of everything promoting everything else, perhaps it’s time to get a new Danny Tenaglia remix on the label once and for all…
