Armand Van Helden - I Want Your Soul (Southern Fried)
UK release date: 3 September 2007
One of Armand Van Helden's invaluable strengths as a dance music producer par excellence is his complete unpredictability. Over the years it's been well nigh impossible to plot his next move, and just when you have him pinned down as a garage house specialist he moves off at a totally different tangent.
Such is the case with his most recent output, which finds him stuck in the quicksand of late 1980s dance. A good thing, when the results are this uplifting. The vocal material is far from original, with Siedah Garrett's 1985 hit Do You Want It Right Now, already plundered last decade by the Degrees of Motion for their own uplifting cover, used as the basis here.
Yet Van Helden puts his own spin on it, with hand claps, chunky beats and fizzing synthesizers all pushing the music, while the "I want your soul" couplet is lifed from the centre of Garrett's chorus and repeated to good effect.
It makes this out as a track you'd willingly hit the dancefloor to, leaving your drink on the side - and for a dance music artist, no praise could surely be greater!
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