As the excellent works of the three winners of Jazzanova's Remix Contest show, today's remixers don't limit themselves to fooling a bit around with the buttons, knobs, and controllers of their soundboards. All three impressed us with their very unique musical approaches that paid due respect to Jazzanova's original vesion of "I Can See" while at the same time heading into a completely different direction stylistically, ranging from deep house via jazz to a mix of country, soul, and reggae. Actually, two of the three winning contributions are rather instrumental reworks than remixes in the traditional sense.
"Since so many astoshingly good remixes had been submitted, it was no easy task for us to come to a final decision," says Jazzanova's Jürgen von Knoblauch . "We dicussed the matter over and over again and finally agreed on three winners who had very different approaches and represented the stylistic variety of all submitted remixes. However, we had to draw the lucky winner of Ableton's software package and Soundcloud's premium membership. Once again, we would like to thank all the remixers/producers who participated in our remix contest and submitted their excellent works."
All three winners will be offered a digital release on Jazzanova's label Sonar Kollektiv. So let us briefly introduce you to these lucky guys:
The only winner which made a remix in the more traditional sense was the DJ/producer collective D.Construction (Bailey a.k.a. Filou - producer & deep house DJ / Chocolate - producer & technical mastermind / Six Sigma - producer & tech house DJ) from Halle/Saxony-Anhalt, which specializes in deep house, jazz, and electronic music. With their relaxed "D.Construction Reconstruction" of Jazzanova's "I Can See" they made it to the Top 3.
Berlin-based trio Ye:Solar featuring e-piano player Random Rhodes, double-bassist Steve Bass, and drummer Groovemaster7 took a completely different approach. The band once started as an almost classic jazz trio but soon also experimented with electronic sounds and samples of their own recordings. Today, their tracks and remixes are included in the playlist of renowned international DJs such as Nicola Conte (Italy), Kid Loco (Paris, France), and Drumagick (Sao Paulo, Brazil). With their irresistibly swinging yet still pretty progressive rework of "I Can See" Ye:Solar certainly delivered the most jazzy contribution to this remix contest.
But the biggest surprise was the contribution by a Lithuanian production team none of us had ever heard of before. Due to lack of better information and a mistake made during the registration process they were listed as mstr4 (The team's name, however, is actually VaiTaiTau). Only when they made it to the top 10 list, VaiTaiTau sent a mail to our partner Soundcloud: "Hello, we are very happy that our version is in the top 10. But when we were uploading the file I didn't name it correctly. It's listed as 'Jazzanova - I Can See mstr4'. However, we call ourselves VaiTaiTau. So our remix should be listed as 'Jazzanova - I Can See (VaiTaiTau Remix)'. Hope this is not a big problem and you're still able to fix the name." What caught our ear was the brilliant guitar playing of Eduardas Armonas who sounds as if he had a couple of lessons from the likes of Bill Frisell, John Scofield, and Ernest Ranglin. We were equally impressed by the ensemble's stylistic range which includes elements of country music, soul, jazz, and reggae. For their rework VaiTaiTau's members Alvydas Maciulskas, Leonas Somovas, Gediminas Andriskevicius, and Aurimas Rimeikis teamed up with guitarist Eduardas Armonas, bassist Domas Aleksa, drummer Vytis Vainilaitis, and guiro player Liutauras Janusaitis. By drawing lots Jazzanova picked VaiTaiTau as the winner of Ableton's Live 7 software and a one-year premium membership at Soundcloud.
Last but not least, JazzEcho as well as their partners from Ableton and Soundcloud would like to congratulate all three winners and thank all the other participants in the contest for their incredibly creative input.
