My dad never really liked remixes. That's actually way of an understatement, he hated them with a passion. The 90s and early 2000s saw a bunch of DJs coming up in the Bollywood music scene, and the best way to break out was to remix songs that were already popular and lent themselves easily to remixing.
Clubs were becoming mainstream, radio stations were beginning to proliferate, and these songs invariably found their way over there, and the DJs who had made them became popular almost overnight.
So anyway, it's the lockdown and I don't particularly have much going on. Apart from this one work project that requires extensive travel, and so is pretty much cancelled for the time being. I'm in my cozy Versova apartment all by myself, and the closest friend is one boat ride away on Madh Island (and the ferries are shut for now), so can't meet anyone either.
Sitting in my living room I figure out the best way to spend my time is make one remix every evening. I'm reading all these blogs and watching videos of SoundCloud artists putting all these restrictions on themselves in order to fuel their creativity. Because with the giant blank slate of a new project on the DAW staring back at you, there's so many possibilities that there's none at all.
So my thing is -
1. I'll take one popular song from the 70s, 80s or 90s.
2. I'll remix it in one evening.
And because I'm quite bad at taxonomy, and I miss my dad, I'll call the thing Dads Hate Remixes. Kind of like an ode to my dad, and how much he would hate these.
Well, turns out he didn't. Not because I'd made them, but he genuinely liked a few tunes from these.
Enjoyed making these. Might do a few more if they take off.
So anyway, here's the first edition of Dads Hate Remixes. I hope you like it.
And if you don't, show it to you dad. Maybe he would.