Dare Me Remix

[Elenio Guardado]

Residentking-of-collaboration Lucas Guimaraes is definitely in his pocket on this one, bringing us a stellar psychedelic-tinged prog rock take on "FATES" from Chrono Cross. I'll let him shout out the band first:

"Once upon a time, Larry told me I needed to take more time cooking my tracks. Well, the early bones of this work-in-progress happened the same month I did "Tyrano's Stash" and only 10 months later I revisited it for Dwelling of Duels Free Month (Placed 10th!). How do you like that Larry?! HUH?! HUH?!

Jokes aside (especially since it was some early bones), one thing that really has helped my process is separating each part of the process into a different chunk. I spent a good deal of time cooking up the arrangement, then working with performers/my own part, then mixing it at the end.

I knew I wanted to cover some Chrono Cross for Free Month. I think I had some other ideas, but something was really tackling me to do a song in the style of the Psychedelic Porn Crumpets. This arrangement is pretty inspired by their song, "Surf's Up". I roped ImAFutureGuitarHero and Cory Johnson from "Tyrano's Stash". I wanted to get Mattmatatt handling some of the guitars both 'cause he's an awesome friend, and he rips as a guitar player AND does a lot of psychedelic/weird sound design-y stuff. jnWake and Hakštok had to be there because they love Chrono Cross, but I also know jnWake was going to be on "Tyrano's Stash" (there was some miscommunication), so I had to make up for that. Cory had to drop out, but we still had a blast putting this together.

After all the instruments came through, I got to mixing. I could've settled for not making it very loud, but this was the first track I really got into the weaves of it with mastering and loudness. I remember I got some feedback for "Cucco's Feathers" about mastering and didn't really understand it at the time (and to think that was just 2 months ago...). It was frustrating to not really get it at the time, but taking some time away from that project and focusing on another one (Yes, I'll get the resub soon!) has REALLY helped me.

Me going into the group chat with the first version of the master saying "I might've made this track too loud" and my friends reassuring me that -13 LUFS wasn't that loud, followed by showing how my reference track ("Surf's Up") was -7.8 LUFS sent me down a whole rabbit hole. I think this track is around -8-9 LUFS? Oh, the pursuit of making more psychedelic rock.

Before I forget, I must explain funny lengthy title. "FATE has no forgiveness for those who dare stand against it..." is from the game over screen of Chrono Cross. I love this quote because it's a double entendre. It talks about how both FATE (the character) and Fate (development of a person's events being beyond their control). This might be my favorite game over screen. Definitely in my top 5.

"this is a solid adaptation of the fates theme! it's kind of a spacey theme with a lot of disparate parts, and i think this is a similar remix in that you've got several different pieces that all come together to make a decent whole. i definitely think you nailed the style, and while there's a few times where instruments get buried, overall i think it sounds like what you'd expect for the style. nice job. this is fun."

If that all sounds compelling to you, this remix should give just a taste of the kind of insanity present in a Lucas Guimaraes and the Dunites set, and showcase how tight of a product he can deliver when he's playing with home court advantage.

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Love and Dancing is a remix album by English synth-pop band The Human League, released in July 1982 by Virgin Records. Issued under the band name "The League Unlimited Orchestra" as a nod to Barry White's disco-era Love Unlimited Orchestra, the album was principally the idea and work of producer Martin Rushent and contains dub-style, largely instrumental remixes of songs from the band's multi-platinum selling album Dare (1981), along with a version of the track "Hard Times", which had originally been the B-side of the single "Love Action (I Believe in Love)". Rushent was inspired by hip hop turntablist Grandmaster Flash and created Love and Dancing on a mixing board. He created vocal effects by cutting up portions of the Dare tape and manually gluing them together. In total, over 2,600 edits feature on the album.

Upon release, Love and Dancing was able to take advantage of the huge success of Dare and also work as a stopgap while the Human League worked on new material. The album received both mixed and positive reviews from music critics and was a commercial success, reached number three in the UK Albums Chart and later being certified Platinum by the BPI. Today, the album is regarded as among the earliest remix albums ever released and has proven influential. In 2002, both Dare and Love and Dancing were remastered and re-issued together in a single package, while a single CD release of the Love and Dancing remaster was released the following year.

Synth-pop band The Human League's third album Dare (1981), produced by Martin Rushent,[2] reached number one on the UK Albums Chart,[3] and has retrospectively been considered one of the era's defining albums,[4] ranking in critics' lists of the greatest albums of the 1980s and sometimes of all time.[citation needed] Dare also found success in the United States, partly because of New York-based black radio stations airing music from the album. The record's synth bass and Linn Electronics drum machine beats paralleled the electro funk music that had gained popularity on New York stations like Kiss, where according to writer Simon Reynolds, "tracks were undergoing radical remixing and be montaged into seamless segues that lasted half an hour or more."[5] Rushent was already aware of the potential of remixing, having embedded a "dub-like spaciousness" to Human League tracks in parts where the instrumentation drops out.[5]

The producer had been listening to hip hop DJ Grandmaster Flash and played his music to front man Phil Oakey, who also enjoyed it.[6] After seeing the DJ in New York, Rushent felt he could recreate his scratching style with tape scrubbing.[7] With this in mind, he suggested creating a dub remix of the second single from Dare, "Love Action (I Believe in Love)", by chopping the song up and adding effects. This would allow Virgin Records to release it on the B-side of the single, as the label was eager to rush-release singles from Dare, leaving the Human League and Rushent without time to record new B-sides.[6] Besides the "Love Action" remix, the producer ultimately created three or four other similar dub remixes to other songs from Dare.[6] Further inspired by the music he would hear in clubs across New York,[8] he ultimately proposed to the Human League that he create an instrumental remix album of Dare, hoping that it would exemplify his production skills and "establish a new benchmark for electronic dance pop."[5]

Nonetheless, both the band and Virgin Records originally relented against the idea of the remix album, not wanting to pay for or release it. Rushent had to fight their opposition in order to create the album.[5] Oakey remained unsure about the project and left Rushent to make the release on his own.[6] Neil Mason of Louder Than War wrote that "Cruel", an instrumental version of "I Don't Depend on You" (a 1979 single released by The Human League under the alternative name The Men) that was released as that single's B-side, laid the formula that would ultimately lead to Love and Dancing.[9]

Love and Dancing is sometimes viewed as a stopgap in the Human League's discography, released to keep the band in the public profile while the band recorded new material.[10][11] Band member Jo Callis has disputed this, saying: "I think that was going to happen anyway. Soft Cell had done something similar around that time releasing a remixed album. Martin Rushent had this concept about remixing, taking a track apart and putting it back together. It was a new idea and concept and it seemed a good idea to everybody to try it out. So the concept of the Love and Dancing would have happened regardless."[12]

Reynolds writes that it "took thousands of man-hours of intensive sonic surgery" for Rushent to create Love and Dancing.[5] The producer spent about ten days making the album,[13] remixing the material on a mixing board with the multitrack recording of Dare being fed into the device.[6] He also operated a Harmonizer on the first send and placed numerous phasers and delay lines that he would proceed to "flick about" into his set up. Rushent recalled: "I'd do a section and if I liked it I'd make a tape cut and splice it in."[6] He created complex vocal effects by hand, cutting up small portions of tape and gluing them together until he had achieved "the stuttering 't-t-t-t' effect."[5] When asked by Reynolds if he used samplers, he elaborated:

"No, no. There wasn't samplers then. I actually did it by cutting up tiny bits of tape. I made myself a special ruler which read out in milliseconds how long a piece of tape was. So I'd say, 'OK, this thing's at 120 beats per minute, so one beat is that long, a quarter of a beat is that long, and so I want to cut that little piece of tape by this length.' That would be the first bit of Phil going 't'. And then I got another copy of 't' and I glued them all together and got the stutter effect: 't-t-t-t'."[13]

Upon the completion of Love and Dancing, the band decided to sell it at a relatively cheap price, believing the release to be "unfair to the fans."[5] Band member Joanne Catherall nonetheless reflected that the group loved the album.[8] The record was released in the United Kingdom by Virgin Records in July 1982, using the group name "The League Unlimited Orchestra" in tribute to Barry White's instrumental, disco-era backing band Love Unlimited Orchestra.[23] The back cover of the album features individual photographs of the Human League, Rushent, his sound engineer Dave Allen, as well as sleeve designer Ken Ansell. Rushent recalled: "They had to have a picture of me. I did the whole thing on my own!"[5] Rushent received no writing royalties on the album and in retrospect believed this to be unfair.[13] The album title was the former name for the song "Do or Die".[24]

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