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As many of you may remember, Depeche Mode, in partnership with AcidPlanet, had a very interesting remix competition back in 2001. Essentially, fans were offered the opportunity to do a proper remix of 2 DM songs: Dream On and I Feel Loved. In order to make that possible, AcidPlanet provided individual sound tracks for most of the sounds found in both songs. You can access these samples at RaphMode's page.
This was the Summer of 2001 and at the time, I was vacationing back in my beloved hometown on the Black Sea coast. Luckily, I had plenty of time on my hands (I wish such was the case today) and I embarked on creating a couple of I Feel Loved remixes.
The reason I chose I Feel Loved (as opposed to Dream On) was simple. I thought I Feel Loved was severely under-produced and had a lot of potential that was unleveraged. It was one of a few songs on Exciter I didn't really like since it was too dancey, too obvious, and honestly a bit boring (what's with the D minor chord throughout most of the song?). Despite all of these negatives, I thought the melody was beautiful and powerful, and I really wanted to transform the song into something a bit more emotional.
So, I started recording the what is now called I Feel Loved (Ghostwheel Transitional Mix). The idea of the mix basically stemmed from a new chord structure that I came up with while playing different chord progressions on my guitar. I ditched the original chords and came up with a very melodic sequence that I used for both the verses and the chorus.
I was able to use some of the song's original sounds, but a lot of it I felt did not really fit the mood I was going for (the original had plenty of harsh percussive & synth sounds). In particular, I borrowed a nice melodic sequence of mellow sine bells which proved to be the foundation for everything else.
There are two other key production elements: the drums and the bass. The bass I synthesized myself using Reaktor and if I remember correctly it was a Moog-type, low-pass filtered triangle wave. The drums are actually samples from the end of another Exciter song - The Sweetest Condition.
The interesting thing about the Transitional Mix is that it actually takes a sharp turn after the third verse. It switches to a major key and drops all the drums and bass tracks and simply goes on with a very ethereal progression of long vocal samples and a beautiful guitar line inspired by yet another Exciter song - When The Body Speaks. The remix finishes with some slide guitar action, which may have been inspired by a Blur song that evades my memory now.
So, I finished the whole thing, but then I realized that it became too lengthy - the competition imposed a limit of 5 minutes for each remix, and my version was well over that. So I did some editing and changed the final bits to a more conventional and obvious ending in order to produce what is now called simply I Feel Loved (Ghostwheel Mix). This one had a duration of exactly 5:00 which I hoped would satisfy the duration requirement.
Of course, I didn't win the competition, but I did receive a lot of positive feedback from the fans. For a while, both mixes were hosted on www.depeche-mode.com for free download. Even more interstingly, a few years down the road, I found out that the Ghostwheel Mix was included in the compilation The 35th Strike: I Feel Loved - Best Of Selection under the name Slyminx Mix. I don't know who puts these together or where they are sold (I certainly haven't seen anything out of it). I felt both flattered for having one of my remixes included and offended at the same time, since nobody asked my permission and especially because they changed the name of the mix (what the hell is a Slyminx anyway?).
If I may be honest, listening to the remixes now, I think there is a lot to be desired in terms of the song's mix (mix as in mixdown, not remix). I recorded these two versions on suboptimal, consumer-type speakers, and I think they can definitely benefit from a new mixdown. I hope one of these days I have the time to do that.
So this the story of my two I Feel Loved remixes. Feel free to listen to them above and download them by clicking on the icon next to the track's title.
How is all this relevant to Newborn (A Depeche Mode cover album)? Well, as you may know, I have covered I Feel Loved for my album and while my version is stylistically dramatically different compared to the remix, the core chord progression is identical and the inspiration is obvious.
Regards,
Ghostwheel
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