Six Degrees of DFA (featuring Andre 3000 and Carl Craig!)
If you haven't heard Carl Craig's remix of Delia & Gavin's Relevee yet, you've really missed out. Much to my dismay, this track, at least in it's original remix form, is no longer available for purchase or streaming via your favorite digital receptacle. Maybe it's a casualty of those brief years that DFA had a distribution via EMI. I have to assume EMI wanted LCD Soundsystem bad enough that they agreed to distributing records by Black Dice as well, which definitely didn't work out for them. Don't get me wrong, DFA is a great label, and Black Dice are a great group if you like noise and weirdness, as are and were many of the artists on DFA, but I can't see EMI benefiting from much of their output beyond LCD, Hot Chip and maybe the Juan MacLean. Delia & Gavin were wonderful too, but their unfettered output is essentially fifteen minute analog synth epics, again a bit of a limited market for the record buying public. So I suppose it only makes sense that when DFA wanted to issue Relevee as a single they beefed it up with a new mix by Delia & Gavin, a remix from James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy of the DFA namesake, an amazingly deep mix by Baby Ford, and the crown jewel that is Carl Craig's remix.
The Carl Craig remix of Relevee is one of the last times I remember people online and in real life talking about something it seems like almost no one had heard. There had been almost speechless praise hoisted upon it, but no one seemed to have heard it, so I started looking around online in hopes it would pop up. I eventually found it on Soulseek, well before the remix single officially dropped, and shortly thereafter it seemed to be everywhere. For once, it seemed all the purple prose was accurate, as I don't recall a foul word being spoken about it. Sadly, less was said about the rest of the versions, especially the fantastic Baby Ford mix, but I wanted to hear all the mixes so I went through the trouble of finding someone selling European white label promos on eBay and probably paid too much for them. That said, didn't matter, because they were amazing mixes on a double 12" with one track to each side for maximum fidelity.
Since this release seems to be strangely absent from the digital landscape (at least legally), I'm just going to post some rips of it in full. That said, you should totally find a copy of this, preferably on vinyl, though I don't think anyone would fault you for grabbing the CD, which is where I ripped these mp3s from. The CD also has a video from assume vivid astro focus which is pretty cool and hypnotic, though you can see it here too.
Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - Relevee (Carl Craig Remix)
Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - Relevee (Baby Ford Remix)
Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - Relevee (Alternate Version)
Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - Relevee (DFA Remix)
On a semi-related note, anyone remember Converse's series of exclusive songs they posted in the early 2010s? Ones that stand out for me are My Drive Thru with Julian Casablancas, Santigold and Pharrell Williams, Hero with Frank Ocean, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon (Mick and Paul were half of The Clash if you didn't know, kiddos. Definitely something to be excited about!) and Diplo, and DoYaThing by Gorillaz with Andre 3000 and James Murphy. Hero is actually still available to hear on Converse's Soundcloud, though that's pretty rare as it seems Converse spent a lot of money on some of these colabs only to let them disappear fairly quickly. That Jules/Santi/Pharrell track is pretty great and shouldn't be left to gather dust on an old hard drive somewhere, though the Gorillaz track was an ever bigger deal. Released with a full-blown music video mixing live action and cg (which has also been wiped from official YouTube accounts), along with a secret long version of the track that clocked in at 13 minutes, it was a big deal, garnering a lot of attention for the amazing line-up on the track as well as its quality. It was a big enough deal that it was the rare track Converse had physical promo CDrs sent out for, and the long version was eventually given an official release on a one-sided Record Store Day 10". And yet, now, apart from buying second-hand copies of said 10" or finding files to download via services like the aforementioned Soulseek, it has again been wiped from the official internet. Seems pretty crazy to me, especially in an age where there artists are all still big deals. They may want that Gorillaz track on an official compilation, physical or streaming, though it's a highlight of strange bedfellows doing something exceptional, especially considering James Murphy's live percussion and production alongside Andre 3000's increasingly rare appearances on the mic, and he's absolutely on fire here! So, for your pleasure, I've re-ripped my original promo CD of DoYaThing (also purchased from eBay, ugh) for your listening enjoyment. It contains both the edit that was available for free, official download via Converse's site along with the full-length version where Andre goes off on a bender about how awesome he is.
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