Progressive House Classics [Jay Dobie] – Buried Treasure – Zone Magazine Issue 047

Its all about selected listening and recommendations of classic, obscure, rare, esoteric productions & remixes that may just have slipped under your radar. Put your battle helmets on and lets get digging! 4 recommendations from the Progressive House Classics vinyl vaults

Kicking this selection off. We’re going for our favourite Urban Soul production. Urban Soul is of course DJ, producer and performer Roland Clarke, and this particular track has 2 very decent remixes worth hunting down. Firstly lets look at the Zanzibar Mix which is going to be the mix most will have initially heard. Described as a garage, deep house outing the mix comes courtesy of Tony Humphries and is named after his legendary residency at the New Jersey nightclub. The track is a chunky synth builder that works its way to that wonderful pattern everybody will recognise. Secondly, its worth looking out for the Sasha Remix which was produced with then studio engineer Tom Frederikse, premiering on the now famous Pet Shop Boys Radio 1 Takeover, standing in for Simon Bates, PSB played a selection of mini mixes from up and coming DJs one of which was Sasha. Does Sasha improve on that Zanzibar mix. Well in a nutshell yes, keeping all the elements of the original track he turns in a more uptempo take that gained attention across the board.

It was 27 years ago that we lost the amazing talent that was Tony De Vit and thought it might be worth highlighting this particular track. Its kind of prototype hard house before we really had hard house. Tony was well known for playing a lot of different genres and sets would regularly include progressive house and trance. When Burning Up first appeared it was picked up by lots of different DJs all playing those melting pot sets that didn’t adhere to one particular genre. Written alongside Simon Parkes the track samples Loleatta Holloway’s Love Sensation and can best be described as classic mid nineties euro house.

Probably our favourite release on the Truelove label and some decent mixes to choose from. Sampling ‘The Winans – Let My People Go’ if we had to pick we’d head for the Rainbow Edit a nice piece of chunky driving house that’ll destroy dance floors in minutes. Classic feel good house with a positive message that slotted right into E culture back in 1991. Another of those early tracks that was just not to be pigeon holed. Big in Manchester, big in London!

As far as delivering on a remix goes this is right up there. Shortly after the mail out of the Ultra Violet Mix we heard about a second mix and boy was it worth the wait. To listen to this in its entirety on the system at Twilo must have honestly been a real moment. I’m pretty sure the last time I spoke with Gaeten Schurrer we talked about this record and the fact he worked in the studio with Sasha on it. It takes no prisoners in its 11 minute glory and when it comes online after the drop at 7.17 you better hold on as you’ll be scraping yourself off the ceiling. Produced by William Orbit and remixed by Sasha. Its a winner!