Artist: Josh Gabriel
Title: Wave3
Label: Nebula
By: Simon Jones | 6 August 2002
Tracklist:

• A: Original Mix
• B: Charlie May Tsunami Mix

Josh Gabriel "Wave3"

Josh Gabriel's career has come a long way from the days of mastering soundtracks for Disney's Aladdin and working as sound engineer on the Oddworld computer games. It was only in fact, in March 2001 that the dance music bug well and truely bit this man when he brought a few white labels of this track, 'Wave3' to the annual Winter Music Conference that year. It was there he met Dave Dresden, forming a friendship that would evolve into production duo Gabriel And Dresden, and 12 months later, after having also come to the attention of one Pete Tong, Wave3 finally sees a full release.

The Original Mix is what one could call a 'journey' in the sense that it goes on for over 12 minutes. Dont let the length or the term journey put you off though. Tight loops, rolling percussion and rattling synths form the basis of this simple yet affective track, which pays homage to the OMD track 'So In Love'. As the track evolves, it fades down, only to return once more and as the hypnotic arrangement loops and loops over and over the intensity builds and builds and the track returns harder than ever, drum effects firing away to really give the track some punch. For something that loops and repeats so much, this track is addictively hypnotic.

Remix duties are handed to Spooky's Charlie May. Famous for his co-prouduction work with Sasha, most recently on Sasha's debut long player 'Airdrawndagger', Charlie deconstructs the track and adds in one thing he knows very much about, melody. Replacing the percussion line with rising and falling melody lines, this 'Tsunami Mix' pays homage to the early 90s progressive house sound, shaping intelligent melody arrangments to create an alternative mix that remains faithful to the original, whilst being very much a track in it's own right. Another feather in the cap for the man May.

Club remixes will follow, with Josh dusting off the original and reworking it with the dancefloor in mind. The Wave is well and truely going to crash on the shores of club dancefloors everywhere very soon.