Slam Remix comp: winner Joe Stawarz

Slam Remix comp: winner Joe Stawarz

27 August, 2007 | 7.03AM

• Written by: Terry Church
• Filed under: Music News: slam, slam remix competition, soma recordings

Aussie producer Joe Stawarz beat over 100 budding producers to win our Slam Remix Competition. His wining remix of Slam’s ‘We’re Not Here’ is now being featured as an official Slam remix on Soma Recordings [it’s track no.3 in the player below], which came as something of a shock to the Perth resident.

The original plan was to release the track digitally, but Soma was so impressed with Joe’s remix that they also released it on 12”.

“I couldn’t believe it when Soma told me I had won,” Joe tells Beatportal.

“I was checking my emails at 3am in the morning and there was this message sitting in my inbox.

“I was so excited but there was no one around who I could tell, so I called my girlfriend and shouted down the phone whilst she was still half asleep.”

Winning remix

Joe’s winning remix is his first ever release.

So how did Joe produce such a bad ass mix?

“I used the software Reason mostly.

“I downloaded all the samples and only chose to use the ones that I found interesting.

“I discarded the original synths and mainly used the percussion parts.

“I used the audio editing program Soundforge to cut up all the samples into little snippets.

Joe’s remix is deep chunky tech house and is a real set builder.

Stripped-back minimal house beats are constructed around a deep rolling Josh Wink-style acid bassline that flows and growls around a tightly knitted groove.

The bassline fades into a breakdown punctuated by a tech loop, before building up into a driving rhythm that features Slam’s original pad synth parts.

“For the bassline and sub bass I used Reason’s in-built synths,” reveals Joe.

“Reason doesn’t support VST plug ins so I had to rely a lot on samples and my hardware drum machine.”

Altogether it took Joe about a day and half to do his remix and he did it right in the middle of his college exams, when he should have been studying, naughty boy.

“I was bored of the books and wanted to waste some time,” says the rebel Joe.

Classically Trained

It comes as no surprise that Joe Stawarz is classically trained and is currently studying classical composition.

“Having studied classical music in detail, it has really helped me to understand music composition as all music theory is based on classical music,” reckons Joe.

“It helped me to understand rhythms and bars and chords and structure.”

Indeed despite the simplicity of his remix, Joe’s version is complex in its structure - it keeps both the mind and your feet guessing.

And when Slam played Joe’s version at London club Fabric recently, it took the roof off says Slam.

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