Darran Nugent & Pavel Lenchenko - How Can I EP

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  • Sampling really is one of those mysterious black arts, isn't it? Do it just right, and you've got gold; do it too much and you've got a lawsuit. Use something recognizable and it's a brilliant hook, use something too recognizable and you're a lazy bastard. What's a poor producer to do? It's probably better not to ask Darran Nugent and Pavel Lenchenko, because with "How Can I" on Moodmusic they've managed to bungle this black art in a spectacular way. The track—an otherwise functional, if unmemorable, house track sitting on a politely driving groove—remarkably manages to do nearly everything wrong. Taking snippets of Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way"—there's a risk right there in itself—pretty much wholesale and bizarrely shoehorning them where they don't even fit, there's something about "How Can I" that just sounds embarrassingly amateurish. Leaving the sample untouched in large chunks, it's such an unwieldy thing that it practically stops the beat in its tracks just for those few syllables of Lindsey Buckingham. (To add insult to injury, they aren't in the right key.) Alexkid steps in for a mostly instrumental remix, strengthening the groove and kicking up the pace but otherwise leaving it fairly faithful, revealing that the song underneath the vocal sample isn't really anything notable either. Strangely, it's the other two remixes that not only rise above the original in terms of quality but actually shed some light on how Nugent and Lenchenko could have done things better. Oleg Poliakov's version again goes the mostly instrumental route but beefs up the low-end, shreds the vocal sample into mostly microscopic grunts, and adds Balearic-lite piano layers to uplifting effect. It's Phonogenic's disco dub that finally manages to fit the sample in somewhat organically: it still sounds a little cumbersome, but riding the lapping waves of the lush yet wooden beat, it's more convincing than any other moment on the EP.
  • Tracklist
      01. How Can I (Alexkid Remix) 02. How Can I (Oleg Poliakov Remix) 03. How Can I 04. How Can I (Phonogenic Disco Dub)
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