Smith N Hack – Falling Stars

Soundhack and Errorsmith’s Smith N Hack project made waves after their remix of Herbert’s ‘Moving Like A Train’. The granular detail showed and punt to bring in old school sounds of brass band stabs was well celebrated. Dixon was more than happy to use it as his Vol. 4 closer on the Get Physical Label’s revered Body Language series. After their acclaimed remix of Ricardo Villalobos’ Easy Lee project it was evident that more was to come from the duo. Even though bleepy mnml from that period appeared to grow bland, ‘Falling Stars’ proved that bleeps used in a different way found still sound fresh. How so? The 2007 release used a wide variety of arcade machine, Atari video game noises. It brought a bit of life to the dancefloor while still maintaining its futuristic outlook.

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Featured on Michael Mayer’s monumental Immer 3 mix, it is a killer cut. The way the track launches with just the 8-bit sounds descending from on high helps you understand why it’s called Falling Stars. These apps used by a JX8P machine are played at different BPMs and at different octave heights to create a magical world. In rumbles the double note MIDI bass, which is not too dissimilar at all to their ‘Easy Lee’ remix. I:Cube, Todd Terje and others on the Nu-Disco strain have used similar. This feels extra resonant with soul. This soul being heightened by the love sick ‘oo’s’ from the vocoder vocal is incredible. With tints of Italo-disco it talks about ‘At the end of the world, at the point of no return / I’m thinking of you, and my heart starts to burn.’ With all the noise that’s going around, the dancefloor will be burning too. A break down takes place of some tight key work, before the bass comes back and streams of ‘stars’ fall. Unreal. Continue reading →