Say / my god / I say something

And so this is Christmas, and what have you done……..and all that nonsense of course.

Here in our corner of the world you’d be hard pressed to work out that you were slap bang in the middle of the most populous Muslim country on the lord’s (whichever one is yours) planet. Java is perhaps different (although the malls are all decked with fake holly and bells there too), but in Bali they certainly do the holidays well..all of them, be they Christian (bearing in mind there are more Christians in Indonesia than there are people in Australia), Muslim, or, naturally, Hindu.

The serving staff and shops and restaurants are all beaming underneath their Santa hats and fake snow…oh yes. In Ace Hardware, in the always oddly deserted Kuta Istana Mall (right next to the giant fake snow and ice fantasy pavilion that the locals queue year round to enter) the almost life-size nativity diorama (a snip at Rp3,000,000…about US$320) and the 5 metre high fake Chrissie trees (only Rp5million) seem absolutely illogical, but as someone recently said, Indonesia would not be Indonesia if you threw logic into the national mix.

Indonesians are very, very good at celebrating just about anything.

And the Chinese restaurant we went to tonight had all the trimmings including a much better class of fake Santa hats than I’ve ever seen in New Zealand.

When we had The Box and Cause Celebre we enforced a strict no Santa hats policy at this time of the year. We could, of course, have been accused of being grumpy old men. But more likely we just didn’t want the roaming meat-head, office party factor coming down the stairs. A no-Santa hats policy was easier than explaining repeatedly to people: you are drunk and you look like a twat so you are not welcome.....

None of this has anything to do with the main purpose of this post which was to pop up a couple of Kevin Saunderson tracks that have been sitting on my server for about six months waiting for me to remember, and the Box / Santa hat thing twigged my memory, as both of these were monstrous at said club. I’ve a soft spot for Saunderson’s Inner City, what with the soaring Paris Grey vocals, and the happy line they drew between the pure Detroit techno that Kevin was instrumental in pioneering (legend has it he coined the term) and dancefloor anthems. IC are well served by compilations and track appearances here and there, but usually in their OG form, with the raft of rather exceptional remixes generally being MIA. So with that in mind I thought I’d post a couple here:

Firstly, the Dave Clarke mix of Ahnonghay, which may or may not be my favourite single in any genre from the 90s (this came out in 1995) depending on the day. The DC mix is good old fashioned, rush to the floor almost banging tech-house (before there was such a thing) but pretty much manages to hint at the searingly beautiful original, tucked away on the flip, next to an equally lovely, though quite different, very purist, Carl Craig mix…..

Inner City- Ahnonghay (Dave Clarke Mix) (6 X 6, 1995).

And then, as is to provide a contrast, from further back, 1989, to be exact, come the rather legendary Def Mix of Whatcha Gonna Do With My Lovin', which was extraordinarily hard to find new until the recent Defected Def Mix collection came out. Sadly, that collection has it only as part of a rather patchy mixed triple CD (such a wasted opportunity), and it’s still hard to find on its own. So to rectify that, here you go, complete with the classic lush Knuckles / Morales rolling groove and the lovely drop down to a downtempo Move Your Body riff at 4.55.

Inner City - Whatcha Gonna Do With My Lovin' (Def Mix)(Ten 1989)

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