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Recorded live from the top of a German World War II bunker at Corbiere, Jersey, Channel Islands on 10th July 2020 for Secret Sunset with Gus F and Georgi Mottram.
The vocal sung by Georgi comes from "O Euchari in Leta Via" written in the 12th century by Hildegard von Bingen and sampled in Orbital's amazing 1991 track Belfast. You may recognise it from The Beloved's The Sun Rising (1989). Remixed for Secret Sunset by Gus F.
Full 90 minute mix is on Soundcloud: / gus-f-secret-sunset-4-...
Now about the music... This is another piece that was created for Secret Sunset that I've loved playing around Jersey, creating magical experiences from iconic locations. Finally time to share it with the world!
Thank you so much Georgi for listening to my crazy ideas and coming on this journey; not only recording an amazing vocal, but also climbing on top of a World War II bunker with me to sing this live at sunset with just a few days' notice... an epic life moment for me! 🥰🙏❤️
Full story of this remix follows, digital sleeve notes of sorts!
Orbital's original Belfast is in my top 3 tunes of all time; absolutely love it, as do so many. A beautiful timeless gem. So why remix it at all, when it's so good already? I knew I risked upsetting a lot of fans of the original (including some of my mates who to summarise mostly said "you'd better not have butchered my favourite tune") - it's a big risk taking on an iconic tune; I'd have been happy to simply play the original, if it wasn't for two issues;
1. It's SO recognisable that in a world where I was broadcasting Secret Sunset around the world on Facebook anything like Belfast is an almost instant takedown
2. The original tempo slows down at the end - so makes it harder to have a deep melodic house flow to a set. I can work around this, but as I was already thinking if I want to play it at all, I'll have to rework it a bit in order for it to not be a instant FB takedown - a ~120bpm track will be easier for me to mix in an unconventional environment (on a little Bose speaker with unfortunate sync/delay in it - mixing on headphones in the wind with no monitor, so less challenging transitions are preferable!) 😄
The first challenge when remixing is typically either needing stems or being able to accurately sample an original.
As it happens, I didn't use any of the original for this, I recreated any bits that sound like the original.
I couldn't get a clean sample of the original vocal either (the acapella is apparently available somewhere but all versions of the Emily Van Evera version of O Euchari In Leta Via I found all have an annoying new age backing track after the initial intro = unusable).
I figured that there would likely be a singer locally in Jersey, perhaps out of work given the pandemic and up for a collaboration. As luck would have it, I found Georgi Mottram who is an amazing soprano, a Classical Brit Award nominee, and persuaded her initially to just lay down the vocal.
However, I thought it would be a fun surprise for Georgi to turn up almost unannounced during a Secret Sunset & start singing 😄 I'd never done anything like this before; we had a basic sound check before; no additional sound engineer or pro setup, just me checking reverb levels & volume. It was a high risk & high reward situation streaming over 4G with a camper van battery & inverter keeping the lights on 😄Lots of fun for me at least... :-)
This mix uses more of a studio recording from Georgi; I've painstakingly normalised the typically high dynamic range in Georgi's recording (basically the variance in volume). Opera singing is typically overly dramatic vs the more subdued & relatively low dynamic range plainchaint that Hildegard von Bingen would have sung, and I'm finally happy with the result.
So there you go - a long story about "my" version of Belfast.
Many thanks to John Dalagelis for mastering as always & input on this final version.
Secret Sunset on Facebook: / secretsunsetjsy
Gus F on Soundcloud: / gus-fraser
Gus F on Facebook: / gusfmusic
Georgi on Facebook: / georgimottramsoprano
Studio version released November 6, 2020
Mastering by John Dalagelis