2GP: "The Razor (Balearic Mix)"

If you’re on the trance scene and you’ve hit the wall, there are ostensibly two ways you can get over it. One is to hire a sessions vocalist and milk them before they become famous (Orbital f/ Alison Goldfrapp: 1994’s best secret); the other is to steal the guts of an old pop hit and skewer it with beats, bass, and voices that sound like they’re saying “Masturbator.” Rob “Shango” Green must have been enjoying a quiet evening of new wave when the simplicity of “The Razor” struck him. He called up Doug Hartington, formed 2GP, and set to work rearranging “The Cutter” by Echo and the Bunnymen, set on giving it Ecstasy powers. Obviously “The Razor” will never touch the original, but if you’re in a club and you start panicking that your pill’s already peaked, surely there can’t be a better tonic than groaning “Say we can / Say we will / Not just another drop in the ocean!” (You’ll have to groan alone though—Green’s kept this version wisely instrumental.)

It’s the Carnatic violin of 1983’s anti self-harm hit that made it so recognizable, and strangely, 2GP don’t uncork that until at least eighty seconds in. First comes the traditional trance build-up, and a simple, signposted synth melody, one where the signposts get cunningly reversed on you as you’re dropped into Lakshminarayanan Shankar’s strings. He was the unknown who who helped spice up “The Cutter,” and Green and Hartington pay him respect, twisting his work around a delicious bass hook. They then add high hats and some old sci-fi pads, brewing up acid house at its sharpest and juxtaposing 1983 with now—or about fifteen years ago, to be more precise: trance music hasn’t felt this fun since a madman grabbed his bango and wrote this. A sample as strong as “The Cutter” should get 2GP on the map (as will those droid voices that keep saying “Masturbator,” seriously), and it’ll be interesting to see how “The Razor” fares when it hits the Bunnymen’s hometown of Liverpool. Anyone from Matthew Street will class it as sacrilege. Anyone in the queue for Cream will nod and tell you yeah, crystal meth can give you brainwaves.