Review
Genre and Mood
Lonely Boy made Love Wanted for the club. Discogs files it under deep house and tech house, and its five-minute length is a DJ’s length. The title adds a feeling the style labels do not: a want, phrased like a small ad, that suggests longing inside a groovy, hypnotic frame.
Song Summary
Love Wanted is a single built for use: one original of five minutes and eleven seconds, and five remixes that each run between six and a half and seven and a quarter minutes. Very little has been written about it, so the facts are the release itself. It was the second catalogue number of a young label, it came from a producer who also posted it on his own channel, and it travelled through compilations rather than charts. The title is the one detail every version shares, and it is what you remember.
Musical Breakdown
The Original
The original, embedded here from the producer’s own YouTube channel, is the version Discogs and MusicBrainz list first: five minutes and eleven seconds, released in spring 2013.
The Remixes
The same release carried remixes by Paolo Mojo, Patrick Podage, Space Coast, Subtron and Brian Morse, every one longer than the original, each giving DJs a different take on the same track.
Concepts in Focus
Deep house and tech house both rest on the house groove: a kick on every beat, hi-hats on the off-beats and claps on two and four, at a moderate dance tempo. The pattern is simple on purpose. It gives a DJ a steady floor to mix on and gives dancers something to lock into, and the character of a track comes from what is layered over it. Listen to Love Wanted with that pattern in mind and notice how the track’s mood sits on top of it.
The release is also a lesson in the remix as a strategy. A small label cannot buy airplay, but five remixes by five producers multiply the chances that a DJ somewhere finds a version for their set. The remixes travelled on their own: Patrick Podage’s version later appeared on Armada’s Deep House Essentials #001, and Paolo Mojo’s on a Darkbeat anniversary collection.
Artistic Context
Lonely Boy is a disco and house producer based in Los Angeles. Love Wanted, catalogued DDR002, came out on Dance:Revolt Recordings, a US label launched in 2012 by the DJ and producer Atnarko together with Dub Creative Group; Paolo Mojo and Patrick Podage, two of the remixers, are among the label’s artists. In July 2013 the producer posted the original on his own YouTube channel with a link to buy the release.
Impact and Reception
Love Wanted reached beyond its small label quickly: in June 2013 the original appeared on Hed Kandi’s compilation Beach House, and the remixes were licensed to other collections. It remains a track that lives in DJ sets and personal playlists rather than in the press. Give it the full five minutes.
