Various – Verve // Remixed²

Why is there a "blue sleeve" listing on discogs? The regular edition is blue. No separate listing is needed. It is confusing to have "blue" in the title when.It is describing the sieeve, and not the vinyl. Every color designation I've seen here till now has been for the vinyl.

Master Piece

If you like old skool vocal jazz then I highly recommend “Verve//Unmixed” and “Verve//Unmixed2”. They contain all the originals in the same order as on the two remixed albums (all 4 albums are 100% unmixed, so you can fool around with the tracks yaself).
It is true though, that “Verve//Remixed” is a stronger release than “Verve//Unmixed2”, but in my humble opinion more than half of the tracks (1,3,4,5,8,11,12,13,14) are really good (read ‘excellent’), the rest of the tracks (except 6) are quite good. I think though, that the Felix Da Housecat and Layo & Bushwacka! remixes are disappointing though taken into consideration that these acts often provide the good shit. Also, the Jaffa remix fades in an annoying way, but hey… thumps up anyway! …and that includes all 4 discs.

Yeah. I coicide with the latter commentary. Felix's "remix" of Nina Simone could be just another boring house track, but it's Nina Simone fer christ sakes!!! Horrible, pathetic, to say the least, I could do by myself more justice to that track than Felix did. Shame on you.
Gotan Project is incredible though, and also Herbert.
Koop just made a piece that FITS so perfectly with Astrud Gilberto and Metro Area amazes us one more time.
However, the magnificence of the original recordings is buried on these mostly sub-par remixes.

The first in this series was clever, and now the second just doesn't come up to par. The only mixes saving this are the Metro Area, Herbert & Gotan Project.

The Felix remix of Nina Simone is sacreligious, an abomination infact.

Such a shame as they could have really gone somewhere with this project.

Venerable Verve Records is again re-vibing themselves with a vivacious August 2003 release of Verve Remixed2. Vibrant producers, Dahlia Ambach Caplin and Jason Olaine, have created a virtual “nu-Jazz Verve Revival” reverberating from the saucy and sassy nu-Jazz vibes of their first Verve Remixed (2002). VR2 doesn’t miss a beat of the original Verve Remixed. They veneer classic jazz bench marks performed by the best songsmiths and inlay nu-Jazz stylings remixed by the brightest beat masters like Chicago’s Felix da Housecat and New York underground beat king DJ Spinna.

Ambach Caplin and Olaine envisioned a variant remixed Verve and reengineered it to produce a 14 track collection available on CD AND vinyl. Verve Remixed2 relive revived divas like Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McCrae, Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughn (my personal fav), and a few others from their first version. But VR2 recaptures seven more “original” artists than VR1. More importantly, a new dynamic dyad of dj’s and musicers kibbitzed to reinvent a virtual Verve remix.

ganja zulu-
h ink magazine-denver
ganjazulu.com