Bootleg leads to local DJ being asked to remix OMG
A RECENT release by Canadian pop star Carly Rae Jepsen and US producer Gryffin has been given the remix treatment by a local DJ.
Josh Le Tissier, 26, who by day works on web development at Healthspan, DJs at Fusion nightclub every weekend.
About seven years ago he decided to start making music as well as playing other people’s, and that led to him taking chart hits and remixing them, putting them up onto music site Soundcloud.
These are unofficial and referred to as bootlegs by the remixers, and any money made by the track being played goes to the original artist.
‘I did a bootleg of Lewis Capaldi’s Someone You Loved which got picked up by Sirius XM, an American radio station,’ said Mr Le Tissier.
A presenter had found his track on Soundcloud, and the station, which has some 34 million listeners, liked it so much that they ended up playing it several times a day.
The station has close links with Universal Music, who publish producer Gryffin and Carly Rae Jepsen’s songs: ‘That led to me being asked to do an official remix for Gryffin.’
At that time the single, OMG, had not been released, and Mr Le Tissier had never heard it: ‘They sent me all the parts – the drums, the vocals, the effects – and I think I had about 40 audio files in the end.’
He had to put them together to create the track first and then set about turning it from a pop song into one which clubbers could dance to.
Among other things this involved speeding up the vocals and adding a faster beat.
Other remixes of the same track change the order of vocals or even do away with them completely, but Mr Le Tissier said he likes to keep the vocals in his remixes, in the same order as in the original: ‘That means when you play it you can sing along,’ he said.
The track is one of six remixes of the song available on Apple Music, Spotify and other online music sites.
SiriusXM has picked it up and is airing it three or four times a day and since its release last Friday it has been streamed about 100,000 times.
Mr Le Tissier is continuing to release his original music at the rate of about one track a month, but said he would be interested in doing more official remixes: ‘I really like Ed Sheeran and Lewis Capaldi and I feel their songs scream out for a remix because people like to sing along to them, but you can’t really dance to an Ed Sheeran ballad.’
He will have a chance to play his remix to a different audience to Fusion’s when he DJs at the Ministry of Sound superclub in London on 13 September.
You can listen to the remix on the music platform of your choice from www.fanlink.to/omg-jlt-remix
