Anonymity can be great sometimes. Sure, it occasionally prompts a quest for unearthing the more-often-than-not well known producer behind the productions (cough Sicko Cell), but for the most part it’s a great vehicle for delivering content that’s unattached to expectations. Such is one of the reasons that the white label only “Shimmy Sham Sham” series has held my attention for its last four releases. Powerful edits of everyone from Grace Jones to the Temptations to Al Green, delivered without ego or excessive liner notes.

This time around delivers a re-edit of Arthur Russell’s “In The Light Of The Miracle” which unleashes a slightly heightened version of the original’s strength – sheer ecstastic balearic dance pop bliss.

Letting the guitar riff come to the forefront of the track while cowbells swirl around in the background like constellations, it’s a classic that evokes some of Russell’s most pop friendly productions. Close your eyes and you can almost imagine yourself stuffed into a sleeping bag in the Rocky Mountains watching the aurora borealis swirl around the sky.

Pulsating bongos are definitely a component of what makes the b-side’s edit of Nina Simone’s “Funkier Than A Mosquito’s Tweeter” a powerful track to play out, but really Nina’s voice is the star here.

Smartly, the track doesn’t try to mess with the sass crammed vocal sample, and it actually cuts almost all other noise out halfway through so that it sounds like she could very well be whispering “you think you’re slick but you could stand a lot of greasing / the things you do ain’t never really pleasin’” right into your ear.

Slightly after that, things get kinda crazy as what sounds like a college drumline appeared out of a cloud of mist and started going ham in the middle of a nightclub.

Stream both of them below and grab it on Phonica ASAP!

Shimmy Sham Sham 004- Side A

Shimmy Sham Sham 004 – Side B

Appropriate that the graphic decorating Kojak Giant Sound’s latest release is a palm tree, because this one feels like stumbling ‘pon a tiny disco club oasis in the middle of the Sahara on a hot July day might feel like.

We’ve raved about the last Young Edits vinyl release on Foot & Mouth, and Luke Fosky’s exceptionally tasteful reworks of Kate Bush and Arthur Russell have restored a lot of my faith in the “soundcloud edit” as a viable genre. The fun continues here, where Stevie Nick’s vocals get wrapped up in some windswept drum patterns and echoing whistles, feeling faithful to the original but like a whole different beast at the same time.

Maybe Tim Sweeney puts it best in his feedback – “The Stevie Nicks edit makes the girls and gays in NYC go crazy… who needs anything else??”

B-Side is a twangy edit of The Catch’s “25 Years” that’s also worth investigating, especially when that saxaphone kicks in, damn.

Stevie Nicks – “Smiling At You” (Young Edits Going Home Version) by Kojak Giant Sounds™

One of the most unexpectedly powerful releases this summer has GOT to be the Foot and Mouth released ‘Young Edits – Move Me Up EP’, four sublime balearic edits by Austrailian Luke Foskey.

‘How We Walk On The Moon’ is Arthur Russell re-edited right, his vocals sound cloud-partingly sublime, with the additional tweaks and percussion that’s been added bringing out all the emotional impact of jumping off a waterfall naked. And let’s talk about the Kate Bush “Cloudbusting” edit, jeeez. When she utters “Ooh, I just know that something good is gonna happen”, you, the listener, totally believe her.

The two b-side tracks employ some samples that are a bit harder to pin down, but from start to finish, this is a slice of balearic bliss. Stream the whole EP below and grab it on Juno. There’s a vinyl out now too.

FAM007 Moving Me Up EP by Young Edits // Youth

Pocketknife Presents: MOVING ME UP (Russell Mania) by Pocketknife

Tracklist after the jump.

Arp & Anthony Moore “Wild Grass I (for Arthur Russell)”
Arthur Russell “This Is How We Walk On the Moon (Youth’s Return To Base Edit)”
Arthur Russell “Make 1,2″
Arthur’s Landing “Love Dancing”
Elodie Lauten “Vision”
Arthur Russell “Let’s Go Swimming” loop
Peter Gordon & The Love of Life Orchestra “That Hat”
Arthur Russell “Let’s Go Swimming (Walter Gibbons Mix)”
Holiday For Strings “Calling Out Dance Mix”
Billy Nichols “Give Your Body Up To the Music (Larry Levan Remix)”
Loose Joints “Is It All Over My Face (MAW Mix)”
Loose Joints “Tell You Today (Allez-Allez Edit)”
Lil Tony “Treehouse (Lil Tony Rework)”
Arthur Russell “She’s the Star (Pocketknife’s Continual Cornfield Remix)”
Recent Memory “Lucky Cloud (Pocketknife Remix)”
Arthur Russell “That’s Us/Wild Combination”
Arthur Russell “All Boy All Girl”
Johanna Billing “This Is How We Walk On the Moon (Bogdan Edit)”
Arthur Russell “Keeping Up (Pocketknife Remix)”
Allen Ginsberg “A Cradle Song”

Mr Skooby Laposky AKA Pocketknife has been a long time friend and favorite of Discobelle. This is his disco stomping interpretation of the Arthur Russell track “Get Around To It”. The track is taken from the Arthur Russell tribute album “Electric Minds”, which was just released and it also features the soulful vocal offerings of Joe Worricker that seamlessly blends with Pocketknifes delicious production work.

Pocketknife (ft. Joe Worricker) – Get Around To It (Sendspace)

A super fresh remix from Krazy Fiesta, of the track “Ten Strikes” from Stockholm outfit O’Spada and the boys certainly provide us with top notch quality once again but this time they go towards more of a mellow analogdisco sound in the vein of Arthur Russell meets Chaka Khan.

O’Spada – Ten Strikes (Krazy Fiesta Version) (direct link)

Morgan Geist with the tenth and latest edition of the fantastic We Make It Good mix series.

“Morgan Geist – of Metro Area / Environ / Unclassics fame – dug deep into the recesses of what must be a record collection the size of a mountain to weave together this dustily beautified journey through abandoned NY. Geist’s selection of late 70s / early 80s electronic tracks exquisitely captures a moment in time when the prevailing disco sheen hanging hazily over the city was being overtaken by the throbbing pulse of murder, drugs, and dirt that ran a heavy current underneath. All in all it’s a mix that captures a certain brand of austere beauty. If that all sounds a little too ‘grown’, we’re almost 100% positive that Mr. Geist threw in some chopped and screwed Arthur Russell for the new jacks towards the very end.”

We Make It Good: Volume 10 – Morgan Geist (direct link)

“This little mix is obviously inspired by the original Cosmic DJs (Baldelli) and innovative DJs of (or nearer to) my own generation, like DJ Harvey and Daniel Wang. I made sure to include some records that I thought I “discovered” on my own, only to hear them played by other (better) DJs who probably knew about them a lot longer than I did. Parallel evolution is a bitch, but I didn’t want to abandon these beloved tracks just because they were “marked” by another DJ. For example, most DJs who know the Transfer Station Blue track associate it with Sarcastic Disco, the infamous and beautiful Harvey mix – yet I believe I got my first copy of it from my departed friend, Barry Lederer, and associate it with digging and listening and learning in his dusty old apartment on 24th Street in Manhattan. I find Harvey inspirational, but don’t want my own Barry-nostalgia supplanted. I realize it sounds corny, but sometimes you have to reclaim music that is important to you, and that’s what a lot of this mix is about for me. – Morgan Geist (Environ, Unclassics, Metro Area)”