Review
Genre and Mood
Around (Solomun Vox) [Moodymann Edit] - Mixed, as the streaming services title it, is the deep house anthem of Noir & Haze and Solomun passed through the hands of a third artist, the Detroit DJ Moodymann. The song is still melancholic and full of longing, its groove still hypnotic, but this is Around - Mixed: one stop in a long mix rather than a record of its own.
Song Summary
DJ-Kicks: Moodymann, released by !K7 on 19 February 2016, runs 30 selections in about 75 minutes, and Around is track 27. Discogs credits Moodymann with the edit, Solomun with the remix and Moodymann with the mix as a whole. In the mix the track lasts 3:20, against 6:59 for the full Solomun Vox. The credits stay the song’s: lyrics by Haze, music by René Kristensen, the Danish producer behind Noir, and a recording licensed from Defected.
Musical Breakdown
No review we found describes what Moodymann changed in Solomun’s remix; this page follows where the edit sits and what reviews say of the edits as a whole.
Where It Arrives
Before Around comes Anne Clark’s Our Darkness, which Pitchfork calls a dramatic, beatless reading, a live, piano-only version, then a 1:37 edit of Peter Digital Orchestra’s Jeux De Langues.
The Edit
Resident Advisor counts 11 re-edits in the mix and says they help it move along at a brisk but unhurried pace; at 3:20, Around lasts less than half as long as the remix.
Where It Leads
After Around, the mix moves on to Marcellus Pittman’s 1044 Coplin, then to Lady Alma’s It’s House Music and Daniela La Luz’s Did You Ever, both in Moodymann edits.
Concepts in Focus
A dj mix is a continuous sequence of records blended so that one flows into the next, and inside one a track takes on the meaning of its neighbours. Resident Advisor heard this DJ-Kicks diverge into soulful house around the 50-minute mark and then take a bizarre detour an hour in with Anne Clark; Around comes after that detour.
An edit is a close relative of the remix: where a remix rebuilds a recording, a DJ’s edit usually rearranges and shortens what is there so that it serves the set. Solomun remixed Noir & Haze; Moodymann edited Solomun. Compare it with Noir & Haze – Around (Solomun Vox), the full version.
Artistic Context
Moodymann is Kenny Dixon Jr., based in Detroit, who launched his label KDJ Records in 1994, runs Mahogani Music and released his debut album Silentintroduction on Planet E in 1997. Pitchfork calls DJ-Kicks his first officially licensed mix CD. In 2019 the label 4 To The Floor reissued on 12-inch vinyl the Moodymann edit with the Solomun Vox and a Chicken Lips track.
Impact and Reception
The mix scored 83 on Metacritic from nine reviews, reached number 8 on Billboard’s Dance/Electronic Albums chart and was named the second-best electronic album of 2016 by Rolling Stone. It is here because it shows a hit becoming a sentence in someone else’s story. Play the whole mix, and wait for Around to arrive.
