Category Archives: Mashups

The story of… Sina ft. Bahramji and Mashti – Soul Awareness

It has taken a long time since I got around to write about this track. I briefly mentioned it in my post Ethnic Chillout meet Disco Music: Sina ft. Bahramji & Mashti in 2012, when I released a second remix featuring Bahramji and Mashti. So it wasn’t until I released the second track that I mentioned Soul Awareness.

Here is a short introduction to Bahramji from his website:

Bahram (Bahramji) was born in 1952 in the Kurdish city of Kermanshah in Persia. As a child he heard the ancient Sufi melodies, which are the inspiration for his music today. At the age of 13 he learned to play the Santoor and started to perform at several places in his hometown. Through playing whirling music for wanderers from different cultures, his style has changed from the traditional approach to his own. He melts old songs into a new form, creating a meditative sphere to uplift body and soul.

I was inspired to incorporate some samples from his tracks, and the album Sufiyan [Blue Flame Records, 2009] was the culmination of spiritual and poetic music in the world of chillout and meditative music. Deriving its roots from Persian poets such as Rumi, Hafez and Saadi, the mystical renditions of the poetry was reflected in beautifully arranged songs that portrayed the mysticism surrounding Sufism, and the one notion of monotheistic beliefs. To draw parallels with Western music, Madonna’s song “Bedtime Story” (released in 1995, written by Björk et al.) has a similar lyrical and graphical inspiration drawn from Sufism.

The story of… Sina ft. Noel – Like A Child (Space Invaders Mix)

Sina featuring Noel - Like A Child (Space Invaders Mix)

I realized that I never posted anything about this track.

There is so much to say about this dancepop/synthpop track, and I almost feel that I am short of breath…
…it has been long due to finally give a little background info on how it came to life.

So Noel (real name Noel Pagan) is an awesome singer that had two #1 hit dance chart songs in the late 80’s; “Like a Child” followed by “Out of Time”, both released in 1988.

The track “Like a Child” has a very distinct bassline that piqued my interest, when I first heard it in the mid 00’s, way later than its release date. At this time, I was also a huge fan of Joachim Garraud, a french DJ and producer known for his co-op with David Guetta, Jean-Michel Jarre, and many more. He also created “F*** Me I’m Famous records” with Guetta, and had a huge success on the Electro house scene overall. Along with his busy music production, he also created the Space Invader mascot that became his signature alias.

Joachim Garraud
Joachim Garraud (C) LA Weekly

Fast forward; while listening to Noel’s track, I received an acapella of Joachim Garraud’s “Space Invaders”, and the vocals were just the right tool to accompany with “Like a Child” – knowing that the original Space Invaders was a classic arcade game by Tomohiro Nishikado in the late 70’s.

So these components resulted in some experimentation with my studio setup at the time, and a 192 kbps MP3 was exported — just for fun.
It was never meant to become an actual remix track. But now, after all these years, I have uploaded it to my YouTube channel, followed by this short trivia about Noel, Joachim Garraud, and Space Invaders.

And here is my version of Like a Child, mashed up with some phat vocals and funky basslines:

You can download Like a Child (Space Invaders mix) for free and have taste of the good ‘ol 80’s.

George Moraitis vs Kraftwerk – No Fate (Xinaa’s It’s More Fun To Compute Mashup)

Uhmazing Mashup

I received an email a couple of months ago from Vision Collective Recordings and they wanted to send me some promo tracks. I gladly accepted the offer, and have been receiving a few emails ever since with some of their releases.

While being on a Kraftwerk craze lately, I thought of playing around with some of their classic songs while mashing it up with some promos from the aforementioned label. What better than promoting some new electronic music.

So here it is, my mashup of George Moraitis – No Fate vs Kraftwerk – It’s More Fun To Compute (Computer World, 1981).

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