On the same label that brought us Karsh Kale, Ekova, and Deirdre, Six Degrees introduces us to another World-flavored group called Lal Meri. Their debut single is reminiscent of Bitter:Sweet's "Dirty Laundry": a sultry, undulating trip through naughty seduction and criminal innuendo. I applaud the genius that thought this song could use remixes, for while the original is dangerous enough, the mixes are spot-on deadly.
Carmen Rizzo Goes Bond
Carmen Rizzo supplies a Bond-esque mix full of drama and suspense, something less World-ly and more trip-hop. It's a good style for the song, and one of the few Rizzo productions I instantly liked.
Morgan Page Heats the Chill Track for the Dancefloor
Morgan Page, however, really took the cake for this song, wrenching the track from chill compilations everywhere and planting it firmly on the dancefloor. I have to bring "Dirty Laundry" up again as a way to compare Morgan Page's club mix growth. "Dirty Laundry" was one of the first club mixes I had heard from Morgan Page, and I felt he utterly destroyed the song. The coy and meek, flirtatious and scandalous lyrical delivery really did not match well with Page's style of mixing, and it goes to show the level of growth he has attained since then. "Bad Things" completely makes up for his misstep on "Dirty Laundry," because for everything I didn't like about his latter mix, I loved two more things about the former.
Firstly, for the sake of a more cohesive mix, Page dropped the lyrics that accompanied the change of key in the original. These lyrics were part of the verses and not a bridge or just the chorus repeated after a change of key, but the track didn't miss them. Unlike the vocals in "Dirty Laundry," those in "Bad Things" are well-placed and seem neither rushed nor out of key. The beats are hypnotic and relatively unchanging, the mix is simplistic, yet there is something that is undeniable in it. It grabs at your center of gravity and sways you to and fro. And to make things interesting, Page provides two vocal mixes, both a dirty and a clean. The difference? At key moments, the dirty mix drops a strategic F-bomb. I happen to prefer the clean mix, not for preferring a lack of vulgarity in my dance music but because I think the silence provides good tension in the mix. His dub, however, only comes in the dirty version, and includes a bit of the chorus, a few "bad things", and the aforementioned F-bombs.
Summary
"Bad Things" probably won't be remembered long, but it
should be. It is a winning achievement for both Morgan Page and Lal
Meri, and I seriously hope both team up for another club sizzler!l