Track Of The Day 29/4 – Sam Thomas

'I'm Gonna Be A Witch' (Alt-J remix)

Context is everything.

Sam Thomas grew up in a classical environment, the son of an opera singer who was destined for a structured, traditional environment. Yet the young artist knew that structures, tradition can very often exclude more than they accept.

Exploring rock and electronics, the singer established a new voice, one that cherry picks from genres, styles. Remove the context, after all, and everything is simply sound. Working with producer Mark Sutherland, Sam Thomas has spent the past two years exploring fresh ideas, taking chances with his songwriting.

Ready to make his move, debut single 'I'm Gonna Be A Witch' finds the artist shifting between disciplines, adding a classical sensibility to a post-rock sound. Out now, the single comes backed with a remix courtesy of alt-j drummer Thom Green. Clearly a kindred spirit, the producer takes the track in a new direction – the repeated sample from a 1930s cartoon, for instance, shifts from being a brooding, dark signifier into something more euphoric.

As we said, context is everything.

Much more dancefloor inclined than the original, this is one of the first remixes from Thom Green to reach commercial release. "Remixing is a hobby I'm becoming more and more interested in" he said recently. "Manipulating sounds on the fly is kind of similar to playing live drums, you can work around the sounds making new ones and that's pretty exciting. With this track the stems gave me a huge pallet of ideas to work from making it fairly easy to get started which doesn't always happen. I love the vocals, they remind me of minimal techno/dubstep tracks which is why my remix ended up the way it did, it felt right to give a pulse to the vocal."

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/im-gonna-be-a-witch-single/id641066738

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