Guy J’s Lost and Found hits its tenth release, and the young label has already made quite a splash. The label’s last release featured its strongest track so far, Guy J’s own mesmerizing ‘Seven’, and for number ten they have recruited veteran Dutch producer Eelke Kleijn, who offers up ‘Rampestamper’. Guy J himself steps up on remix duties.
Eelke Kleijn’s original is a punchy tech-houser with tinges of classic filtered house. The track progresses through a series of peaks and troughs, with the main ingredients being a simple two-tone hook worked over a burbling bassline and tight percussion. It’s very well constructed, as you’d expect from a producer of Eelke Kleijn’s caliber, but it’s definitely a party track. It’s not hard to imagine it sounding really exciting when played to a huge audience under blue skies; and indeed you don’t even have to use your imagination, since Guy J has been posting videos of it kicking off under just these circumstances. On the other hand, if you’re tuned in on headphones, watching the wind whip the rain sideways and wondering if a double-ended Darth-Maul-style umbrella might possibly save you, the track doesn’t have a whole lot to offer.
That’s where Guy J’s remix steps in. Initially presenting just a kickdrum and a hypnotic bassline, the remix lets the bassline do the heavy lifting while building with subtle percussion and synth parts. Things start to really get interesting around the three minute mark, when a lovely little motif emerges. The sound here is quite reminiscient of another of the label’s highlights, Guy’s remix of BP’s ‘Inspirado por Usted’, but with the bassline working harder and the melody kept much more tightly restrained. Despite the slow and gentle buildup, the track packs a surprising amount of punch coming out of the breakdown, replacing the melody with sheets of white-noise and clever, teasing little fragments of Eelke Kleijn’s original. It’s a simple and understated remix, but it works really well and it gets the balance between fidelity to the original and giving the track a genuinely new flavour just right.
I suspect it will be Eelke Kleijn’s original that gets most of the attention here, but in my view it’s Guy J’s remix that lends the package depth and longevity. In any case, whatever your mood, you’ll find something fitting here on this nice release from Lost and Found. 8/10
