Now here’s an unusual approach to inducing that feeling of familiarity in your listeners. Cover the work of producer/remixer like Jay Dee and do so in a style that turns them from the urban to the laidback and melancholy. Live Footage have done just that with their album “Plays Jay Dee” – and I have the vague recollection of a CD of instrumental remixes by Jay Dee himself that took a similar tactical approach – and, rather surprisingly, it works.
We are not talking about some MacBook Pro reinvention on the cheap as live instruments are used extensively thus bringing a rather more organic feel to the proceedings. With a cello to make things elegantly mournful, “Didn’t Cha Know” and “Got Till It’s Gone” make for fine chill out tunes. In fact, they would make excellent soundtrack cues for a Luc Besson movie too. You could get some dance floor activity out of “Stakes Is High” so Live Footage have clearly not forgotten the roots of the music that they have chosen to reinterpret.
As is often a problem with instrumental albums, “Plays Jay Dee” does seem, on the surface, to suffer from a case of verisimilitude but, in this case, that is actually the point and the end result is actually quite absorbing especially when taken in all at once.