Guten Tag!

I awoke to find this wonderful EP of Citadel songs waiting for me in my inbox this morning, and what a wonderful start to the morning it was. I clicked the link, and half an hour later, I had decided to skip my morning class (disclaimer, I do not endorse skipping classes). OK, let’s get to it:

Delving right in, we start with some real nice deep house from Kill Them With Colour. Their remix of Stand Next to Me is everything I like in a deep house song: a grooving bass line, interesting, yet subdued lyrics, and a beat that just keeps on building on itself, and then scaling back down. Snazzy. Real Snazzy.

Then we move over to another remix of Stand Next to Me, by Pretty Pink, which has a tech house feel. A simple, mesmerizing track that is sure to get the ol’ foot tapping, and head bobbin’. Standout section of the track for me is the whistled melody at the end. The reverb gives the whistling a gorgeous texture, and I wish there were more of it.

Moving into the remixes of Heartstrings, there is a little more diversity of genre. The third track of the EP, is a remix by No Big Deal. It starts out with, my favorite… more whistling, and progresses into a very nice electro section with very well-produced vocal samples. Then the lyrics and build-up to the electro house drop, the second half of which has a gorgeous layering of vocals and drop. This track packs so many different sections into 6 minutes, it always has a little layer that you missed the first time. Worth listening to several times to really savor all the complexity.

Lenny Skolnik’s remix is hard to label in terms of genre, but it’s gorgeous, and on Souncloud it’s tagged as “dope,” so I’ll go with that… His remix of Heartstrings has a nice downtempo feel, with some gorgeous (what sound like) harp samples. Major props for the harp samples, and also for the sexy breakdown at 2:18. Very well produced.

Finally, we have the most unique remix on the EP, by Evan Chapman. It’s unique because it doesn’t have any vocals directly sampled from the song. The entire melody, and some overlaid beats, are made by percussion, including the likes of xylophones, tambourines, and other assorted percussion (drums, stick clicks, etc…). This “cover” if you will, is very cool, and I love it because I forget that it’s electronic music. It sounds totally acoustic apart from a few effects, and that is original. Big ups to Evan Chapman.

Reviewing this EP was very satisfying because of the diversity of genre’s encompassed by the various remixes, and it also made me check out Citadel’s original music. The fact that they only have 10 followers on Soundcloud is a travesty, because their originals are equally superb as the remixes. Granted, it’s not electronic music, but it’s very good. So head over to their Soundcloud at your leisure and be sure to check out both the remixes and their originals.

Kill Them With Colour on:

Facebook | Soundcloud | Twitter

Citadel on:

Facebook | Soundcloud | Twitter

Keep it Three Hunna’,

^Xaos