Discovering the back story to Spiller’s “Groovejet” was quite the revelation earlier this year. I knew that it was first played at Club Groovejet by Boris Dlugosch in 1999 and that’s how it got its name. I also knew every compilation going had this on it in 2000 – finding out the real reason was Salsoul Records being greedy was illuminating.

More often than not, one of the prices to be paid for an old record becoming available digitally is new remixes. And I dreaded finding out who that nice Mr Dunmore had commissioned to do them. He was keen to note on Twitter a while ago that a lot of artists had expressed an interest in remixing the song.

The first of those remixes has now emerged. It was first played at Defected Croatia and it’s now been played on their radio show – it’s the first track on this week’s edition. The choice of remixer? Purple Disco Machine (PDM). Which shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows anything about Defected.

But the important question is simply – is it any good? Well, the answer appears to be yes. I quite like it. PDM decided not to use the infamous Carol Williams sample on his version, but some of the chords clearly take inspiration from it. Instead, he seems to have just based his rework around Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s vocals – and has actually managed to make them sound palatable!

As someone who’s done a few remixes in his time, I think it takes courage to look at a sample-heavy song and rework it by ditching the sample completely. It takes the song in a totally different direction – which runs the risk people will either love it or hate it.

It happens to remind me of a much earlier Defected release – Bob Sinclar’s “I Feel For You” from 2000. It samples “Look For Love” by Cerrone – the remixes by CZR and Spiller use the sample in different ways, but the Astrotrax remixes ditch it entirely.

This isn’t a bad start to these new remixes – let’s hope the rest provide something just as interesting. Now, when’s your next rant about there being no good new music out, Simon?

By The Editor

Editor-in-chief at Amateur’s House.