Simon Shackleton Brings Elegance and Class to the Dancefloor
With a long and acclaimed career, Simon Shackleton is adept at making music that is both emotionally and physically moving. He has done it under several guises to great effect, but right now he is in a fine run of form under his own name. His latest work – Club Mixes Volume One – sees him flip a couple of recent singles from his gorgeous ‘Dreamstates’ series into floor-facing tracks that perfectly marry light with dark and form with function.
Take Draumur Innan Draums (Club Mix) for example — it starts with achingly beautiful piano keys that are elegant, classy and musical, but the blasts of bass down below are much more raw, physical and direct. Together, they add up to a potent piece of dancefloor melancholy that will bring a tear to your eye as well as sweat to your brow.
It’s the same story with Oplot (Club Mix), another track that is both introspective yet empowering. It pairs tender piano chords and swooning strings with synths that fizz, bristling breakbeats and crisp hits.
Liberating
“When I created the original versions of these tracks, the dancefloor was a long way from my thinking and in many ways that was liberating from a creative perspective,” says Shackleton. “It allowed me to create without feeling that there were ‘guard rails’ or rules in place. And at no point did I feel any obligation to cater for ‘the club’.
“However, having DJed all over the world for the past 30 years, dance music and club culture are deeply engrained in my psyche and it was only a matter of time before I revisited the originals of Draumur and Oplot. I didn’t want to sacrifice the musicality and tone so set about creating remixes that preserved the emotional weight of the originals. I wanted the backbone of the tracks to be a compulsive groove with plenty of space around the sounds to maximise their impact on big sound systems.”
High Point
Both Club Mixes by Simon Shackleton capture pain, beauty, anguish and hope all at the same time. For that reason, they will form the high point in any DJ set. Out now, the Club Mixes come hard on the heels of Afterglow (Simon Shackleton’s Golden Hour Remix), another stunning dancefloor-friendly cut snapped up for Nick Warren’s The Soundgarden – Summer Collection 2022 compilation album.
Working with world-class musicians, Simon is currently putting together an exciting ‘Dreamstates’ live show, which will premiere at Amsterdam Dance Event, in October.
