Review
Genre and Mood
Yoko Duo wrote Close These Curtains as a fragile, intimate song; Stimming turns it into Close These Curtains (Stimming Remix), a slow, organic piece of deep house with minimal precision. The mood is melancholic and hypnotic, deeply intimate, like a room going quiet after everyone else has left.
Song Summary
The title sets the scene: shutting out the world, staying in a private space a little longer. Stimming keeps the hushed vocal at the heart of the track and surrounds it with his signature textures, soft, slightly dusty percussion, warm bass, delicate melodic details and a groove that breathes rather than pounds. The memorable detail is how tactile it feels, as if every sound had been recorded by hand.
Musical Breakdown
At almost seven minutes, the remix unfolds with the patience of a long exhale.
Intro
A soft kick and crackling, organic percussion set a muted pulse, with faint melodic fragments drifting in.
Build-up
The bass rises gently and small melodic motifs start to repeat, the groove slowly gaining weight.
Verse 1
The vocal appears, quiet and close, more confession than performance, floating over the beat.
Main Section
The full groove settles in, hypnotic and warm, with the vocal phrases woven through intricate, shifting textures.
Bridge
The drums retreat and the track becomes almost ambient, voice and melody suspended in soft reverb.
Climax
The beat returns with the richest layering of the remix, melancholy and euphoria held in the same moment.
Outro
The elements fade one by one, ending in near silence, as if the curtains have finally closed.
Concepts in Focus
A remix usually makes a song more danceable; Stimming’s makes it more intimate. He keeps the vocal at the centre and lets the track run to almost seven minutes, so the song is slowed down emotionally even as it gains a beat. On the same Remixes release, Monokle and Irrelevant also remixed Close These Curtains, a ready-made comparison of three producers reading one song.
The house groove here breathes rather than pounds. The kick is soft, the percussion crackles like something recorded by hand, and the bass enters gently in the build-up. It is still house, steady and danceable, but the space between the sounds is as important as the sounds themselves.
The bridge turns to ambient texture: the drums retreat and the voice and melody hang in reverb, with no pulse to hold on to. That pause is what gives the return of the beat in the climax its weight, a structure borrowed from the dancefloor and played at the volume of a quiet room.
Artistic Context
Yoko Duo, formed in 2010 by the producer Holger Zilske and the singer August Landelius, released the original Close These Curtains as the opening track of their 2011 album Behaving Like a Widower on Fauxpas Musik, written and produced by Zilske. Stimming’s remix arrived in June 2013 on the label’s double twelve-inch Remixes, catalogued FAUXPAS 006R, alongside remixes by Lake People, Dave DK, Kim Brown and others, together with an official video. Stimming, the Hamburg producer Martin Stimming, trained in violin, piano and drums as a child, releases on Solomun’s Diynamic label and is known for hand-made sounds and field recordings; this remix is a textbook example of that craft.
Impact and Reception
The remix became a quiet favourite from the Fauxpas catalogue and a natural choice for late-night and after-hours sets, where its gentle intensity can hold a room spellbound. It is here because it shows how a remix can deepen a song’s emotion rather than simply speed it up, and how much space a producer can leave without losing the dancefloor. Close your own curtains and press play.
