Sea Sex & Sun: release and video

Alright, that's official: our remix of Eddy de Clercq's tribute to Serge Gainsbourg's «Sea Sex & Sun» is out on iTunes, on the «Gainsnord» CD (link) and on video (above). Tonight Eddy will be on De Wereld Draait Door, a popular Dutch TV program, and Saturday is the launch party at the Paradiso in Amsterdam. All information about all of this on the mini-website here...

The tracklisting...

01 Bossa 2009 Mix 4'14"
02 Xhosa Vocal Mix 5'31"
03 Laurent & Lewis Electrodisco Remix 6'38"
04 Laurent & Lewis Electrodisco Club Remix 8'22"
05 Laurent & Lewis Electrodisco Radio Edit* 3'42"

The credits... Written by Serge Gainsbourg, vocals by Eddy de Clercq. 01 02 produced by Eddy de Clercq, backing vocals by Jovanna. 01 guitar by Nelson Latif, violin by Melika Hadzic, co-produced by Zorko Opacic, recorded in Amsterdam at ZOX studios. 02 extra vocals by Yemu Matibe, mbira dza vadzimu and other percussion by James Fourie, recorded at Corinne Cooper Studio, Grahamstown, South Africa. 03 04 05 produced and performed by Laurent & Lewis, backing vocals by Jovanna & DJ Natashka, recorded at Studio 109 in Amsterdam, sound engineering by DJ Natashka, mastered by Ferry Verhoeve.

The lyrics... «Sea, sex and sun. Le soleil au zénith. Vingt ans, dix-huit. Dix-sept ans à la limite. Je ressuscite. Sea, sex and sun. Toi petite. Tu es de la dynamite. Sea, sex and sun. Le soleil au zénith. Me surexcitent. Tes p'tits seins de Bakélite. Qui s'agitent. Sea, sex and sun. Toi petite. C'est sûr tu es un hit. Sea, sex and sun. Le soleil au zénith. Me surexcitent. Tes p'tits seins de Bakélite. Qui s'agitent. Sea, sex and sun. Toi petite. C'est sûr tu es un hit. Sea, sex and sun.»

Balearic Japan

Now that the DJ Janine is finished and out, I can concentrate on other projects. One of them is the forthcoming EP of Maehara Motomutsu, aka Moto, from Japan, a talented DJ and composer that is a bit obsessed with Detroit.
With Lewis we are working on a track that is turning more and more balearic, from the time House music was happy and brotherly. Since I had problems with Moto's chords, he sent me cute pictures to explain me how it was supposed to be, like the one above. I put them in Logic Pro and then exported the file to the dark side of my Mac (the XP side) to mistreat it the right way...

Espace plastique out

After a lot of work, Espace plastique from DJ Janine & Tamiyo is out. There is a website (dj-janine.com), a video (here or here), and more and more platforms are offering it for download (already Juno and DJMr, awaiting iTunes and Beatport as we speak). Trax asked for the wave of the fourth track, so don't act shocked when you see it on the sampler...

DJ Janine & Tamiyo "Espace Plastique"

Alright, this one took a long time to finish. My apologies to Tamiyo and her fans. It's the new DJ Janine, it's the Original Soundtrack of an Art installation by DJ Janine (music), Tamiyo (dance, lyrics and singing) and Pierre Marly (visuals), and it's entitled "Espace Plastique". I co-wrote it and produced it. The magnificent sleeve just got finished by Pierre, with pictures made by Sandra & Orquídea from Kraft Video. Mastering was beautifully done by Ferry Verhoeve at MusicTrades.

The lyrics of "Installation Sonore I" (5'19"):
ゆっくり回って。
足元に気をつけて。
おもいっきり息を吸って。
目を見開いて。

...and of "Installation Sonore II" (6'50"):
きこえる？ きこえない。
どっち？ むこうじゃない？
誰？ わからない 。
まだ？ もうちょっと。

"Installation Sonore III" (5'02") is an instrumental. The fourth (3'46") track is just an edit of the second one, far too long for radios and impatient people.

Espace Plastique = done

Yes. I'm done with the final mixing of DJ Janine & Tamiyo's EP, "Espace Plastique". It's now at the sound engineer who will master it. It has three tracks (plus an edit): Installation Sonore I, II & III. I think people won't be disappointed. It's techno, it's ethnic, it's avant-garde, it's mostly danceable, and the texts are in Japanese.
Curious?

2 Justus @ Köln

This time is, I hope, the right time. Friday I'm taking the ICE from Amsterdam Centraal to Köln HBF to visit Justus Köhncke, and hopefully make sexy music with him, maybe finish some old stuff, maybe make new songs, I dunno yet. He's also going to DJ at some big event, so I'm also very happy I'll be able to dance to the rhythm of the beat of Justus...

Rain Extended

I heard today from Aaron-Carl that the different versions of Erica LaFay's "Rain" are gone to the distributor for physical and digital distribution. I still haven't seen the sleeve yet, neither do I have a release date. But it's happening.
Inbetween, I got very positive reactions on our remix, from the USA, from France, from Japan and from Holland mainly. DJs seam to really love the extended version, so as a holiday gift (the summer holidays just started in Holland), I give you the Laurent & Lewis Neuhaus Extended Mix. Enjoy.

Pierre Marly online

It was about time... Pierre Marly, the guy behind the aesthetics of Cherry Juice (and all the gorgeous Laurent & Lewis sleeves), has finally put his portfolio online. Very cool.
http://www.dataselected.com

Rain Laurent & Lewis Neuhaus Original Mix

OK, I got so many angry emails of people who were curious and couldn't find the song anywhere that I put it online. Here we go with the Original mix. There is also a Radio mix, and a 10 minutes Extended mix... I really love Erica's voice!
Thank you Ferry for the beautiful mastering!

Remix for Erica LaFay

Yesterday night very late I finished a remix for Aaron-Carl's new protégée, Erica LaFay. The original is very Detroitian, somewhere between Techno and Soul. Since I knew the Detroit side was covered brilliantly by Aaron-Carl, I decided to play a very different card and go for European melodies. Somewhere between Paris and Berlin, to be precise.
I found some nice chords on Logic™ when I was at Didier Lestrade in Normandy (France), then I started to work it in Cakewalk. I changed them again when Aaron-Carl told me it didn't fit. So here it is, for the freaks or the Ukulele fans: Am 7 / Em 7 / Gm 7 / D 7M. Aaron-Carl sent me again treated voices (with extra autotune) so I could have the European sound for the voice, and I made beats on Reason.

At that point, I was in Poitiers (France) for work and the hard disc of my Mac broke. I had to wait untill I was back in Amsterdam to change it. I did, and also installed the new Mac OS 10.5 to make sure I could use Bootcamp to install Windows XP. That wasn't difficult, the only stress was that at the computer shop they sold me the wrong RAM memory so once installed the Mac didn't even start.
I spent my weekend installing XP (still takes forever) and figuring that I had to run the Mac OS installation disc to install all the drivers. Then I installed all the necessary programs and went back to work.

I decided to work only with (virtual) vintage synthesizers and it took a while to find the balance between the voice, the synths and the beat. Now the whole thing is finished and sent to the sound engineer. Once it's back, mastered and equalized, I'll cut the parts to make a Radio mix and an extended mix. I'll put it online here to listen as soon as I have it and that Aaron-Carl is happy with it.
Inbetween, I got enthusiastic reaction. Aaron-Carl loves it, Didier Lestrade wrote me "I love it", which is always very good to know. Come back online soon for the mp3... I still hesitate between "Laurent & Lewis Növohaus Mix" and "Laurent & Lewis Neuhaus Mix" (the ö and the ü are not always well recognized by American computers).