Review
Genre and Mood
Mario Basanov released We Are Child Of Love as house in no hurry: deep house with a disco pulse, which his label, Needwant, called “the slow mo original”. It is sultry because the label heard the singer Minalga deliver “a smooth sultry vocal”; relaxed because of that slow motion; romantic because this page hears the title as a love song.
Song Summary
The single came out on Needwant in spring 2012, on a 12-inch catalogued NEEDW021 and digitally, as the follow-up to Basanov’s Lonely Days. Needwant wrote that it matches Lonely Days in vocal quality: this time Basanov “passes the mic to Minalga”, backed by what the label called his “ever-consistent production”. Discogs credits Marijus Adomaitis, Basanov’s real name, as writer and producer. The original mix runs five minutes and forty-five seconds; a short cut version had already appeared on his own YouTube channel in September 2011.
Musical Breakdown
No source we found times the original part by part, so this guide follows the label’s notes, version by version.
Main Section
The original is the slow one. Listen for the pace first, then for Minalga’s voice, which the label calls smooth and sultry and places in front of the production.
The Other Versions
Basanov made two more versions himself. The dub, in Needwant’s words, has “a bumping old school feel with an energetic bassline” and keeps snippets of the vocal; the redub brings “even more hefty bass”, the full vocal and “skippy percussion”. The Mekanism’s remix adds what the label calls “a progressive touch”, made “for 4am floors”.
Concepts in Focus
A dub version comes from Jamaican studios, where a record was stripped to drums and bass and the voice was left in pieces. Mario’s Dub follows that idea inside house: bass up front, the vocal reduced to snippets.
A remix by another producer is a different thing. Where Basanov’s dub and redub rearrange his own parts, The Mekanism, new Needwant signings, rebuilt the track for a later hour of the night.
The music video, credited to Basanov and “inspired by Minsk”, runs three minutes and forty-seven seconds, a shorter cut of the song than the original mix.
Artistic Context
Basanov, born Marijus Adomaitis in Kaunas in 1983, produced Lithuanian pop singers and released dance music under this name until 2012, the year he won Best Electronic Act at Lithuania’s M.A.M.A. awards. In 2014, as Ten Walls, he reached number 6 in the UK with Walking with Elephants; in 2015 his comments comparing gay people to paedophiles cost him festival bookings and his agency, and he later apologised. A year after this single he shared an Innervisions EP with Konstantin Sibold, whose Konstantin Sibold – Madeleine shares its patience.
Impact and Reception
The redub travelled first: it appeared on the compilation Future Disco, Volume 5: Downtown Express in February 2012, and the label reported plays from Manik and Soul Clap, among others. A version of the song, crediting Minalga as writer, returned on Basanov’s album Journey that November. Needwant predicted it would be heard “well into the summer months”; give it a slow summer evening.
