Raphael Saadiq & Joanna Law - Sometimes/First Time Ever (Mellow Groove M...

This is my favourite mash-up so far! The fantastic retro-soul of Raphael Saadiq´s Sometimes set to the mellow groove of Miss Joanna Law´s cover version of First Time Ever (I Saw Your Face). Joanna Law has released a string of superb downtempo singles in the early 90´s under her own name and she was also part of early triphop/breakbeat project Pressure Drop . Her luscious vocals were often used for dance-tracks by other producers. Raphael Saadiq was a founding member of Tony! Toni! Toné! in the 1980´s and he continues to work as producer and solo artist. His 2011 album The Way I See It is considered as one of the best retro soul albums. Composition and production are a tribute to the classic soul sound of the 1960s. While the album sounds like it really comes from that era, it´s never in danger of becoming a pastiche. The original First Time Ever (I Saw Your Face) is a cover of a folk song by Ewan McColl from 1956. It´s been covered numerous times especially in the 1960s and 1970´s. Most famously in a version by Roberta Flack. Law´s version was used as an acappella by Coldcut on their seminal Mix CD Journeys By DJ in 1995 and a few years later it was used by Way Out West for the amazing progressive/trance banger The Gift. For this remix/mash-up I substituted the sparse, minimal drums of Saadiq´s song with the the drums and the bass line of Law´s "Mellow Groove Mix". I had to speed up Sometimes considerably to synchronize both songs. In the process I pitched Saadiq´s voice down. Both songs have piano lines which flow together perfectly and the backing vocals singing "sometimes" every few bars fit amazingly well with Law´s vocals. It´s these moments, when two songs, that don´t have anything in common merge together as something completely new and original. This mix was done -as all my mixes- in realtime with the free Virtual DJ program. No overdubs and edits were used apart from the tools that the program offers. The video uses parts of a documentary about the New York World´s Fair 1964.