Review
Genre and Mood
Solee’s Phoenix - Unique Repeat Remix is tech house, the style the remixing duo Unique Repeat name as their base. The feelings chosen here, groovy and playful, are theirs too: they describe their music as one huge, irresistibly catchy groove with a taste for quirky, cartoon-like sounds. No review of this remix was found to confirm how much of that it shows.
Song Summary
Phoenix is a track by the German producer Solee, first released in October 2014 on a single with Shanti, at just over ten minutes. Parquet Recordings followed in February 2015 with a remix single, catalogue number PARQUET098: Johannes Brecht’s remix, Fabio Giannelli’s and this one by Unique Repeat, which runs eight minutes and 27 seconds. MusicBrainz dates it to 9 February; the YouTube listing gives 23 February.
Musical Breakdown
No source describes this remix part by part, so this breakdown stays with what the remixers say about their own style.
Main Section
Unique Repeat, the friends Dan and Sinan, describe a style in which the shuffled groove of frisky tech house meets cartoon-like, sometimes even kafkaesque sound effects, with neo-trancy melody layers and quotes from retro synths, in a constant morph of styles and atmospheres. Listen for which of those ingredients this remix uses.
Outro
How the remix ends is not described in any source. Eight and a half minutes is a DJ’s length: notice whether the ending is built for mixing into the next track.
Concepts in Focus
A remix takes the parts of a finished track and rebuilds it, often for a different floor or mood. A label’s remix single gathers several remixers at once, so each finds a different use for the same material and DJs can choose the one that fits their set.
Phoenix also shows the alternate version at work. Within a year of the original came Solee’s own video edit of four minutes, the three remixes on PARQUET098, a remix by AKA AKA and Thalstroem in June 2015, and in September a Timelapse mix and a Slow Motion version on his album Out of Nowhere.
Artistic Context
Solee is a German producer releasing on Parquet Recordings. Unique Repeat formed in 2011, when, in their own account, two best friends whose music had always been too different for a joint project found their creative vibes falling in sync. Compare Kollektiv Turmstrasse – On The Streets (Let Freedom), another duo’s remix.
Impact and Reception
No review, chart place or other reception of this remix was found. Unique Repeat uploaded it to their own channel in 2019, four years after release. Listen for the remixers in it.
