Strictly Roger Sanchez is disappointing and just a little sloppy
Three months after January’s pretty stellar Mood II Swing comp, Strictly Rhythm (part of BMG since 2013) and Defected (apparently handling licensing) have released a new 3CD effort showcasing the work of genius house creator and remixer Roger Sanchez.
Sanchez himself drew up the tracklist and seems proud of it, but for anyone with a little knowledge of his productions and remixes dating back to the early nineties (when he was just 23) there’s not much to excite, and a couple of errors that could easily have been avoided.
Note to self: don’t fuck up the first track
CD1 is dedicated to the vocal remixes Sanchez did for the majors, mostly in the 1990s. How then did Defected manage to put an instrumental version of Billie Ray Martin’s “My Loving Arms” as track one, instead of the Hands In The Air mix they were supposed to use? The timings aren’t even the same.
The error has been fixed for the digital download version of the comp, but it’s not a great start.
CD2 is for Sanchez’s own productions, but track 9 “Body Heat (Nu-Solution mix)” cuts off mid-bar 20 seconds before the end. How could no-one notice that? Were they asleep during mastering, or what?
I sent a message to Defected and asked what happened. They replied:
The master you refer to was one that we were sent direct by Roger. That was the only version we had. Our production team were aware of it.
This is the first time I’ve encountered a label knowingly putting an incomplete track on a compilation. They certainly didn’t mention it on the sleeve, and don’t seem to feel bad about it. Astonishing.
CD3 is full of easy-to-licence (and cheap) tracks from Strictly’s own catalogue that most will have heard before. Despite Sanchez’s claim that “the album includes some previously unreleased dubs”, I could only identify two tracks (out of 31) that hadn’t been out digitally before.
Maybe compilations have reached their limit now? Maybe a lot of masters are now lost or nigh impossible to get the rights for, making labels fall back on the same old tracks?
Or perhaps it’s just laziness
Seven tracks on Strictly Sanchez are also part of an 11-track Mixmag compilation available on iTunes and other digital platforms, meaning that this new comp reproduces the majority of an existing release.
Couldn’t a more original selection be found? What was “rare and exclusive” then definitely isn’t now.
Even the sleeve image is recycled
This made me laugh. A quick analysis of the JPEG used to promote the compilation on Defected’s own site reveals that the bricks on the cover were ‘lifted’ from a site called Genealogy In Time.
They are provided as “inspiration to help you break through brick walls”, something that may have come in handy to find a more original tracklisting.
In fact, if you look carefully near the bottom right corner of the image, you can still see the original site’s name written in light grey. It’s less visible in the final version, but it’s definitely still there.
Having a compilation whittle down 30 years of music into 30 tracks while pleasing both connoisseurs and Ibiza clubbers was never going to be easy, but it’s disappointing that there are no genuine finds here, despite the fact that dozens of Sanchez’s remixes are still not available digitally.
We need more daring, more searching, more perseverance from labels if the lost classics are to be found again. Rather than moving things forward, Strictly Roger Sanchez is just treading the same old tame and tired ground.
