Mudd – Eighty Three (Remixes) (Claremont) 12″

Pre-sale for October 18th.

Mudd – Eighty Three (Conrad McDonnell Dubs)

‘Eighty Three’, a sumptuous slab of slow-motion gorgeousness smothered in sun-splashed synth sounds and warming electric piano motifs, was one of the undoubted highlights of Mudd’s critically acclaimed sophomore solo album, In The Garden of Mindfulness. Now the track has been given a makeover by Conrad McDonnell, a long-time friend of the family and Claremont 56 contributor.

McDonnell is famous for his wild and effects-laden dub mixes, both as a solo remixer and alongside long-time musical partner Dan Tyler as the Idjut Boys. Together, they provided deliciously wayward and mind-altering takes of tracks from the Claremont 56 catalogue as part of the label’s 10th anniversary triple-CD compilation back in 2017.

Now McDonnell has gone solo to deliver an album of dubbed-out revisions of In The Garden of Mindfulness, a set that will land next year. To get us all in the mood, he’s laid down a trio if reworks of ‘Eighty Three’ in his distinctive style.

McDonnell first offers up the ‘Le Cidre Dub’, a slowly pulsating rendition in which lightly echoing and tape delay-laden guitar, synthesiser and Rhodes riffs drift across a throbbing electronic groove and low-tempo dub disco drums. The veteran DJ/producer has effectively given the track a more cosmic and spaced-out spin whilst retaining much of Mudd’s intricate and densely layered instrumentation.

Those seeking even wilder and more out-there acoustics are catered for by McDonnell’s two alternative dub takes. He successfully strips back the track to its most skeletal form on the ‘Uppity Dub’, bringing the sparsest of beats in and out of the mix whilst focusing on ambient synthesiser sounds, bubbly electronic patterns, echoing electric piano notes and Mudd’s squelchy and addictive bassline. His favoured effects are all audible in the mix but never dominate the sound space.

This celebrated side of McDonnell’s audio output comes to the fore on the EP-ending ‘Uppity Again Dub’, in which waves of trippy and picturesque electronics lap against a locked-in, delay-laden dub disco groove and flashes of reverb-heavy bass. It’s effectively a heady, mind-altering ambient dub interpretation of a sun-splashed Balearic treat. Like the other revisions on the EP, it offers a mouth-watering appetiser for the album of dubs still to come.