Tim: Monsieur Adi, a French DJ who likes his synths with a big helping of strings, as heard on this remix of Pompeii. A*M*E, a London-based singer who pretty much all pop music blogs have been championing and who is best known for being on Duke Dumont’s Need U (100%). Together, this.
https://soundcloud.com/monsieuradi/whats-going-on-ft-a-m-e
Tom: That is indeed a big helping of strings.
Tim: A bit of backstory: the vocals are a cover (ish, sort of, vaguely) of Soul II Soul’s Back To Life (However Do You Want Me); that got significantly remixed by Monsieur Adi a few years back into something similar to this, and that’s now been re-fiddled with and tidied up a bit, given new vocals and will shortly be released as an actual single.
Tom: Familiar enough that the audience will like it; not familiar enough that this’ll be called sacrilege. It helps, of course, that’s it’s a damn good remix.
Tim: It is good; I’d go so far as to say very good, in fact. The strings work very well for me – under the verses they’re almost what makes the song, and their near ever-presence provides something to hang onto as the rest of the song mutates around them. From the beginning of the singing we go from high-pitched keyboards synths, a basic drum beat, then a combination of the both in what would be called the chorus if there was any semblance of a regular structure to this. For the later instrumental section we pay a brief visit to the Tron soundtrack, and then coming back for the closing part we get everything thrown in at once.
Tom: When the sixteenth-note drumbeats kicked in — the Tron bit, I think, by your definition — I actually muttered “bloody hell” under my breath.
Tim: It’s all rather brilliant, and while the vocals are perfectly good, it’s the production which really makes this, and on those terms it’s one of the best we’ve heard all year, I reckon. This deserves to be huge; I really hope it is.
Tom: Agreed.