Anchorsong’s “Testimony” Gets the House Treatment (Letherette Remix)

Tokyo-born, London-residing electronic producer Anchorsong blends electronics with analogue instruments to create a highly organic sounding form of dance music. Traditional Indian drums match up against waves of gentle synths, the warm drums driving the beats and the synths elucidating the melody and atmospherics. It’s a potent and unique approach to electronic music, one that seems to open up endless possibilities. Anchorsong‘s music is so warm that it possesses a great humanity. The rhythms are the sound of the world ticking on by, the relentless movement of life, while the melodies soothe the soul.

Anchorsong (a.k.a. Masaaki Yoshida) released his latest album Cohesion last Friday via the always intriguing Brighton-based Tru Thoughts label, and the song “Testimony” is a perfect highlight of Anchorsong’s approach and it shows off his Bollywood influences. Recently British duo Letherette completed a remix of the song that removes the drums, adds digital beats, and turns the track into a house tune. The effect is smoother and more mellow, a bit of soulful chill-out.

Anchorsong says of Letherette, “I’m a big fan of them and really pleased with how they transformed the original track with their magic touch.”

Meanwhile Letherette tells PopMatters, “I knew it would be a challenge to mix our styles together but I chose to remix ‘Testimony’ because it had rhythmic elements I could use. With the percussion, I could see a house track forming and wanted to find samples and percussion that jelled well. I used lots of different sampling techniques, slowed individual sample chops down to get loops to swing a bit more and used things like ‘Chord’ (Ableton) to layer samples, especially kicks and snares.”