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Lana Del Rey, Solomun

West Coast - Solomun Remix

Solomun's eight-minute remix of Lana Del Rey's West Coast sets her sultry, unhurried vocal over a deep, thrumming house groove and a dark, shifting bass, one of the 2014 remixes Del Rey commissioned for the Ultraviolence single.

By korczis 2 min read
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Review

Genre and Mood

Lana Del Rey and Solomun’s “West Coast - Solomun Remix” is deep house with a dark heart: haunting in its low end, dreamy in the voice that floats above it, a song about California carried into a club after midnight.

Song Summary

The original, the lead single of Ultraviolence in 2014, written by Del Rey and Rick Nowels and produced by Dan Auerbach, is a melancholy love song about a woman torn between love and ambition, famous for a chorus that slows by nearly 60 beats per minute. Del Rey commissioned a whole set of remixes for its release, from Four Tet, MK, Camo & Krooked, Zhu and others; Solomun’s was one of them. It runs past eight minutes, and in 2016 it was collected on his Diynamic compilation Selected Remixes 2009-2015.

Musical Breakdown

No source walks through this remix section by section, so this breakdown stays with the elements the 2014 coverage describes.

The Groove

Dancing Astronaut heard Solomun’s “thrumming, deep house-rooted beats” colliding with Del Rey’s “impossibly sultry vocals”, a groove built for a long night rather than for radio.

The Bass

The same preview describes a thick layer of dark vibrato under her lyric and a sonorous, shifting bass: the remix’s weight sits low.

The Voice

Del Rey stays at the centre, with what the preview calls jazzy additions around her ethereal vocal.

Concepts in Focus

A remix rebuilds a recording from its parts. Here the vocal stays and nearly everything beneath it is Solomun’s, which is why the credit carries two names.

Its foundation is the bassline, the dark, shifting bass that Dancing Astronaut singles out, and a house groove built to hold a dancefloor. A house track normally keeps one tempo, while the original slows down for every chorus; the sources do not say how Solomun handles that shift, so listen for it yourself. For the producer’s touch on another voice, compare Noir & Haze – Around (Solomun Vox).

Artistic Context

Solomun, born Mladen Solomun in Travnik and raised in Hamburg, founded the label Diynamic in 2005. His sound has been described as house with deep, funky basslines, euphoric melodies and emotionally charged vocals. His remix of Noir & Haze’s “Around” was Resident Advisor’s remix of the year in 2011, and in 2012 Mixmag named him DJ of the year.

Impact and Reception

THUMP picked it among the best remixes of the single, calling it a “spooky house remix” with “real Yuma Tent vibes”. Give it the full eight minutes.

Learn from this track

Intermediate

What you will learn

  • Explain what a commissioned remix is and why a pop artist might order several remixes of one single.
  • Describe how a deep house remix rebuilds a song around a bassline and a steady groove while keeping the vocal.
  • Compare a remix with an original whose tempo changes and say what a dancefloor version must give up or keep.

Listening guide

  1. the vocal Lana Del Rey's sultry, unhurried voice kept at the centre, which Dancing Astronaut set against Solomun's thrumming, deep house-rooted beats.
  2. the bass The thick, dark bass under her lyric that Dancing Astronaut heard as sonorous and shifting.
  3. the added details The jazzy additions the same preview noted around the vocal.
  4. the length Eight minutes, long enough for a DJ to mix in and out, against a single of under four.

Concepts in this track

bassline

67 tracks

The lowest melodic part of a track. In dance music it often carries the hook as much as the vocal does, and its rhythm against the kick drum defines the groove.

remix

164 tracks

A new version of a recording made by reworking its parts: changing the beat, harmony, tempo or structure, often by another producer. A remix can turn a ballad into a club track.

house groove

45 tracks

The rhythmic signature of house music: a four-on-the-floor kick, off-beat hi-hats and claps on two and four, at roughly 118 to 128 beats per minute.

Listen next, and why

Questions for discussion

  1. THUMP called this a spooky house remix. Which parts of Lana Del Rey's original already sound spooky, and which come from Solomun?
  2. The original slows down for its chorus. What does a dancefloor remix gain, and lose, when the tempo has to stay steady?
  3. Why might a singer commission remixes from producers as different as Four Tet, MK and Solomun for one single?

References

  1. Wikipedia. West Coast (Lana Del Rey song). Encyclopedia
  2. Dancing Astronaut. Lana Del Rey – West Coast (Solomun Remix) [Preview] (2014). Review
  3. VICE (THUMP). The Best Remixes of Lana Del Rey's West Coast - MK, Solomun and more (2014). Article
  4. Wikipedia. Solomun (musician). Encyclopedia
  5. YouTube (Lana Del Rey - Topic). West Coast (Solomun Remix) (2016). Video
  6. MusicBrainz. West Coast (Solomun remix), recording. Database

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