Artist: Filterheadz
Title: Endless Summer
Label: Love Distortion
By: Jason Calvert | 18 June 2006
Tracklist:

• A: Original Mix
• B: Max Graham Mix

Filterheadz "Endless Summer"

Filterheadz. I'm sure you all have at least one of their tracks/remixes which you thoroughly enjoy. I certainly do, and particularly with their older work, I knew them as constantly bringing quality to the tracks they remixed. While it is true that they have taken a step towards the trancier sounds in recent times, I sadly am not feeling this "Endless Summer" one at all.

Typical Filterheadz percussion starts the original mix off at quite a steady tempo. The bassline builds in standard fashion, then the percussion subsides as the basic melody is introduced and mashed with a cut up vocal. It all just seems to come together in a very cliché fashion which has just been done way too many times before. The production qualities are all there, but the ideas are severely lacking. Knowing how the scene works, this will be played to big crowds of clubbers who will lap it up, but from the listening standpoint, there really isn't a lot to behold.

One who has taken a much steeper turn with his production is Max Graham. Once hailed as one of the masters of tough beats and haunting productions, he seems to have weakened off a lot from this image in recent times. His remix of "Endless Summer" is slower and has more of a groove in the bassline than the original. However the high range seems to have been overdone, and it is overly busy with high percussion, sliced vocal, and other random fx which give the mix a cluttered feel. The bassline is a nice improvement, but I couldn't get into it enough to kick back and groove on, which I think was the direction Max was wanting to take the track in.

As the scene moves forward, ideas need to move forward also. With the way music is being distributed these days, more and more producers are able to get their tracks out with relative ease, meaning that with a huge influx of new material hitting us, tracks really need to stand out to be noticed. This here is not what I see as being forward thinking in any respect, and the ideas have just been overused way too many times in the past. If you like to keep it safe, give this a listen, otherwise you can easily discover something more interesting in some of the upcoming talent floating around at the moment.