This project was on my mind for a long time, and I finally was able to tackle it just a few days before posting this page. This is the first time I have done a remix of a remix.
Time After Time is a track from The Beloved’s 1989 album Happiness, and was released as a single in 1990. It’s essentially a lush ballad with a bed of strings and harmonic vocals. The album version and the so-called ‘Muffin Mix’ from the single release are vastly different — the latter adds heavy drum loops and there are many reggae/dub elements to the mix, including an extended rap session by Leslie Lyrics, but less of Jon Marsh’s vocal track. The ‘Muffin Mix’ was definitely my favourite of the set; there were two other mixes in this style, but not as good in my view.
I had always envisioned a ‘muffin’ mix with more elements of the original track, because the beat was so hypnotic and I wanted it to go on longer. So inspiration just hit me while I was listening to the track so I set about to try and deconstruct it.
No multitrack was available, so I again resorted to UVR5 to isolate the stems on several mixes of the original tracks. The drum loops were resampled from their original sources to improve sound quality. At first, I was thinking of doing a Mad Professor-style remix, as he had done for Massive Attack, but the drums were too important to me and they ended up dominating the mix. After playing with some effects and arrangements, I ended up with a new ‘dub’ remix that closely resembled the ‘Muffin Mix’, just with my own flair — heavy reverb and echo on the vocals, cutting in and out, an effect that I quite enjoy.
The next day, I realised I wasn’t done with the exploration, and decided to make a more standard mix with the complete vocal parts. This, I know now, was really the main goal, even though I created this afterwards: I had actually wanted to make an ‘a-side’ mix that had more of the strings, guitars and keys over the hypnotic hip-hop beat. I’m satisfied with this pairing of mixes overall.
Time After Time (Three Little Pigs)
The Beloved
The ‘a-side’ mix. Unable to upload to SoundCloud, as it trips the copyright algo.
Time After Time (Three Bags Full)
The Beloved
The ‘b-side’ dub remix.
CREDITS
written by Jon Marsh and Steve Waddington. produced by Martyn Phillips. remix concept by The Little Sisters. additional vocals by Leslie Lyrics. additional production and re-remix by Earl Three.