Shwayze - Get U Home 4:24 PM

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This is not a sequel. This is what happens when the sun dips down, that swollen moon comes up, the sea water ripples and cools, and the Pacific Coast Highway still feels warm on your bare feet with a little of that leftover sunlight trapped in the blacktop. This is the last hiss of the last popped bottle cap, when the bubbling depths of a golden Corona swallow that last sliver of lime. This is where the story continues, with the top down, the wind spraying loose sand from your hair. This is what happens when you don’t go home with the sun… and you follow the moon.

“We can’t sit on the beach with an acoustic guitar forever!” proclaims Cisco Adler. “This is not a one-trick pony.”

His other half, Aaron Smith (a.k.a. Shwayze), closes his eyes and nods and offers, “We’ve already got that beach-time summer vibe, chilling during the day. Now we want some stuff for the clubs that bangs your ears out and you can dance to it. This is definitely an evolution from the first one.”

That first one, the self-titled Shwayze, ushered the unlikely duo to unlikely heights. A string of multiple hits (“Buzzin’,” “Corona and Lime”) fueled by millions of Internet plays carried them to top ten album sales, landed them a coveted slot on the Vans Warped Tour, and turned them into reality television stars on MTV. In a wound-up world, Shwayze was a life-lesson in laid back lassitude, a coast-to-coast call to make every day a lazy day. And if success always breeds a bit of contempt, Let It Beat comes out swinging.

“It’s like, ‘All right, here it is!’” Shwayze says, laughing as he describes the challenge posed on the opening track, “Livin’ It Up.” “You guys said we couldn’t make another one. You thought we were gonna make the same thing. You didn’t think we were deep enough! Well here it is. And don’t be mad when your girl leaves with us.”

Featuring contributions from New Orleans hip-hop duo The Knux, Shwayze’s lifelong hero Snoop Dogg, Ric Ocasek from the Cars, and Darryl Jenifer, bassist for legendary D.C. punk band Bad Brains, Let It Beat is a fearless experiment held together by the controlled yet casual guidance of Adler’s production.

“I made a conscious effort to beef the drums up and make it thump,” he says. “The last record had one pace, I wanted this one to have more dynamics and go up and down like a rollercoaster ride. It’s about letting your heart beat and letting the blood pump through your body. It’s about not stopping the flow. Let it all flow and it will all turn out right.

The first single, “Get U Home,” is an unapologetic ode to lust satisfaction… before you leave the club: “Take me in the bathroom/Take my clothes off/Make love to me up against the dirty wall/’Cause I can’t wait to get you home.” Let It Beat is never shy, never afraid to extol its own brand of virtue, it never apologizes, and, of course, you’re always welcome to join.

“I’m definitely endorsing that behavior!” announces Adler, referring to the whole “dirty wall” scenario in “Get U Home.” “None of it is fantasy. We just live it and tell the story.”

“Our music is our lifestyle,” Shwayze says. “We’re not faking it.”

Shwayze was a juggernaut, an unexpected triumph from two beachcombing purveyors of pleasure and sunlight. It tapped into the hidden hedonist in us all, freeing indulgence from guilt for at least the length of a record. Let It Beat extends that day into night. It’s nothing less than a celebration of life. For every sarcastic wink, there’s that genuine gleaming grin at the thought of the next thrill. Let It Beat is not a fantasy; it’s an invitation to a better reality.

“I’ve been a musician before I was anything else,” Adler says. “I was screaming for people to just listen to the music. But then at some point, I had to look inside and tell myself to just keep doing it and it eventually it’s gonna show people itself. That’s when it started working, amazingly enough. When you just let everything flow, it’s gonna flow in the right direction. When you start trying to control the flow, that’s when you dam it up.” “It’s all a dream come true,” adds Shwayze. “We just want to keep on living the dream and keep on living it up.”

DJ Hell - The DJ (Featuring P. Diddy) 5:37 PM

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The latest single taken from the much lauded Teufelswerk long player sees Hell “hooking-up” once more with hip-hop superstar P. Diddy for the freestyle jack-track “The DJ”. The pair worked together before on “Let’s Get Ill” and “Check This,” creating two classic dance floor hits. But for ‘The DJ’ these two masters wanted to set the techno world straight and send a very clear message ‘to the motherf*cker plays a 4 minute version.’ That you ‘can’t get even get into your thing with a 4 minute version.’ With this in mind Hell is very pleased to present his latest single ‘The DJ feat. P. Diddy; one original track, four remixes, over one hour of music! So yes, “This goes out to all the motherf*ckers that like 15-20 minute versions of a mother f*cking record.”

Many of us might wonder what sort of position P. Diddy has commenting on the state of clubs and the forgotten art of playing the full version of a record. This is a man who’s own Production work with mega-stars such Notorious BIG redefined East Coast Hip Hop. But for those in the know P. Diddy is no stranger to club land. Hell himself describes P. Diddy as a man who ‘knows about techno music… When he was a kid he was going to the Sound Factory to see Junior Vasquez.’ In the higher-echelons of Dance Music history this was a very important time for US “Rave” culture, much like the European Halcyon Rave days of the early 90’s. The most striking difference being that, as with all great New York clubs from the Paradise Garage to Sound Factory, these parties went on for days and so did the records. But more recently P. Diddy has been ubiquitous in club culture, from Partying with Hell and Claude Von Stroke in Miami and tearing it up with Felix Da Housecat in Ibiza So P. Diddy has a privileged position, in that he was there then when the art of playing the long version was at its peak and he is here now, a time where blog culture and Rock Star have-a-go DJ’s line-up on mass to play low bit-rate MP3s.

As an internationally revered performer Hell knows a thing or two about DJing and with his recent releases we see a definite shift towards lengthy mixes. On his long player ‘Teufleswerk’ two of the poppiest moment clock in at 9 + minutes. The last single to be released from this album, ‘Hells Kitchen’ featured an 18-minute remix from Playgroup aka. Trevor Jackson. But nothing prepared Gigolo for the package we have here, 5 tracks, 60+ minutes of music with the Radio Slave mix weighing in at a colossal 28 minutes. Speaking to Resident Advisor Matt Edwards aka Radio Slave said “I'm down with the 20 minute versions! I'm also into Dj's playing the whole record! Most producers still make records with a start and an end… I actually wanted to do a 60-minute version and my friend Tom Gandey (Cagedbaby) recorded a lot of piano parts in Bordeaux, which I used in the last 10 minutes... So I guess I just let the track do its thing. I played about 25 minutes at Fabric and it definitely wasn't boring!”

This seems to be an understatement; the next time Radio Slave would play this record would be the following Sunday at ‘We Love…’ at Space in Ibiza, in the presence of one Pete Tong! So impressed was Tongy that he played it the following week on his BBC Radio 1 ‘In New Music We Trust’ show in the Big Three section. But this is not the first time the record has been played on Pete Tongs Radio 1 show. In fact the original was played by the man himself and also guest DJ Laurent Garnier for the Essential Mix. So it is fair to say that this record is already pretty Hot with most big name DJ’s!

Speaking about his collaboration Hell has said that P. Diddy “is a provocateur and he likes to do his own thing but at the same time he is a genius business guy… I was doing some music for him and like he said ‘You do something for me and I’ll do something for you.’ I’m very pleased he let me release that song and he’s even dissing the DJs on it, you know the crowd pleasers.” Which makes you wonder how Hell approached the Remix selection and whether this selection is sympathetic towards the message of the record? This is a question that might never be answered, because Hells approach was very straight forward, he wanted the very best DJ’s to remix what he sees as a track by a DJ for the DJ’s. Ass such the only way to approach this was to send a personal message to each collaborator/remixer. The response was the package. Paul Woolford, Deetron, Jay Haze, Sis and Radio Slave, all presenting diverse remixes that take the original vocal as the lead. Formats are still being discussed over at Gigolo HQ, but ideas so far include a E2-E4 style vinyl release for the Radio Slave mix, which will see it presented across two sides of a Long Playing vinyl. Another vinyl release is penned strictly for DJ’s, and then two separate digital packages, which include a Clean Version of the original by DJ Hell and producer &ME. On the subject of this clean version Hell was quoted in the UK Web-zine The Quietus as saying I was told I would have to clean this song before I could release it in America and I didn’t know what they meant. But they mean to cut the swearing out; which is funny because I don’t need to worry in Germany. In Germany I can say ‘motherf*cker’." But with such growing anticipation from every corner of the globe Hell stepped up and bleeped his way through P. Diddy’s profanities. The result is a 9-minute blooper that has all the energy of the original with an added humor synonymous with DJ Hell. On that note we will let you enjoy the ride.