A scintillating makeover: Damon Jee gives an uplifting treatment to “Before The Sunlight”
85%Overall Score
• Hefty percussions
• Hypnotic electro synths
• Dark Disco at its finest
Taking a decade-old track and giving it a new life is a job easier said than done, requiring special merit- as displayed by the French moniker Damon Jee for “Before The Sunlight,” originally composed by Echonomist featuring Black Soda in 2014.
In retrospect, the original track was one of the earlier releases in Echonomist’s oeuvre, who later would break through with his idiosyncratic take on indie dance and electronica; garnering the attention of the likes of Dixon. In this version, heavy-set percussions frolic beside an off-beat, rhythmic dose of bassline as the ambiance gets supplemented with prolonged, hoover-ing synth riffs implementing a rave mood. Among all this is the vocal snippet, which talks over the beat; a stylistic and aesthetic flourish over the production.
Damon Jee deployed his experience- over two decades of being an industrious DJ/Producer- into this track effortlessly. Here he equipped his signature Dark Disco sonic arsenal, a subgenre stemming from the realms of indie dance and post-disco/electro— innovated and propelled in the underground scene by the relentless efforts from Damon Jee.
The instrumental gets an absolute modernist and robust spin; percussions are replaced by a bolder set of toms, giving a juggernaut-like big-room groove. A somber pad fills the silence initially, eventually allowing space for a massive and hypnotic arp, as other analog-type synths extend the darker, industrial tones in the remix. There’s a culmination right around the breakdown, which stops with the arp playing a disjointed riff; gearing up with a snare riser, beat revisits with a roaring chorus with the arp in the lead. Here, the groove and its impact take precedence, made possible only by unmatched creativity in arrangement skills and sound design facets.
A formidable remix, Damon Jee pulled off a superb redesign for an already potent record, making it a storming indie dance record capable of entrancing the crowd!