20HZ Remixes EP – Capricorn. Released June 16th 2023 on R&S Records
20HZ by Capricorn is a 90s anthem which has once again been given the remix treatment on this 30th anniversary release from R&S Records.
The track was first recorded in 1992 by Dutch engineer/producer Hans Weekhout, making the track now 31 years old. It was later released the following year on the R&S sublabel, Global Cuts.
As with so many celebrated R&S releases of this period, the track was quite ahead of its time, striking a perfect balance between the rhythmic and the melodic, and delighting dancefloors for three decades.
The rising dynamics of those marching band drums are what make this track so special, instantly evoking a carnival atmosphere.
And it’s all carried along on an off-kick bouncy bassline that has since become a staple of trance, hard house and other genres that would become more popular later in the decade.
A Tribal House Classic
This has always been a favourite track of mine and, though showing its age, I know from experience it can still hold its own on the dancefloor today.
It’s also been a part of my collection for at least 27 of those 30 years and I hammered the shit out of it on my very first turntables while learning to mix.
I was lucky enough to pick up a copy quite cheap in the 90s, though it wasn’t the R&S version but rather an Italian version which was released on Italy’s DFC (Dance Floor Corporation) label.
It’s essentially the same release, however; 20HZ on the one side and a naff flipside with a horribly dated cheesy house fest called “Didn’t I” and another track called “For The Soul, Body & Mind” which sounds like your standard early 90s Euro-rave fodder.
Neither of those have tracks have stood the test the time but who cares since 20HZ itself is such a classic.
Like I said, it’s all about those drums, as they come marching ever closer towards you, gradually growing louder, becoming a joyous parade of percussive perfection.
Remixing a classic is never easy, especially one with such history and musical depth. Taking the best of what worked and updating it for a new audience often becomes an exercise in futility, even with the best of intentions.
By trying to contemporise the music and applying modern production techniques the spirit of the original is usually lost completely, resulting in little more than a cheap and fleeting nostalgia rush.
And we’ve been here before. This isn’t the first time that 20HZ has seen the remix treatment.
The late 90s saw another release of 20HZ with remixes from Nalin & Kane and Wildcat, not to mention the myriad bootleg versions, none of which managed to capture the original magic.
So do these new remixes succeed where others have failed, by doing justice to the original?
Well, actually, this time around there’s something more interesting at play…
Here Come The Drums…
This first track, the Andert Tysma Remix, takes an unexpected turn straight out the gate by taking the element which the track is most famous for, the drums, and stripping them out completely.
Instead, we get an intriguing ambient interpretation based entirely around 20HZ’s opening bell melody, enveloping it in soft pillows of reverb, strings, piano and ethereal pads.
There’s the faintest hint of those famous snares – just for a moment – but otherwise this track does its own thing.
I’m generally not a fan of ambient and usually require some rhythmic component to keep me engaged but I absolutely love this.
And that’s why I also love R&S, they’ve been going for 40 years now and they’re still defying expectations, still taking chances.
Track two, the Marco Lys Remix, does a Danny Tenaglia and decides its time to bring the drums back.
It’s a more stripped-back version this, retaining the bells and drums only, while adding a few new elements to help freshen it up.
It’s a decent effort and I could easily envision dropping this in the middle of a house set, but still feel that it lacks the bounce and kinetic satisfaction of the original.
Next we get to the Vromm Remix, 100% guaranteed to test the bass integrity of your car stereo speakers to the absolute limit.
Vromm opts to takes a completely different approach yet again, ditching the iconic snares in favour of spiced-up tribal percussion and utterly shredding the bell melody before serving it all up with some hefty kicks, lush pads, ravey basslines and rough yet intricately programmed drum breaks.
This one’s not a march, it’s more of an urgent shuffle, rhythmically jostling, building momentum, meandering wildly, an explosion of unexpected sonic tangents from start to finish.
Sure, it’s a complete deviation from the original, to the point of being utterly unrecognisable, but it’s a riveting piece of music none the less.
The final remix by Carl Cox is aimed squarely at the dancefloor. Clocking in at around 137 BPM it’s fairly lively alright, though given the source material and the standard of remixes I know Carl’s capable of, I can’t help but feel like he phoned this one in.
Which is ironic actually because, back in May, I was fortune enough to catch Carl Cox live at his hybrid show at the Pyramids in Egypt. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity that obliterated my bank balance, but who cares because the memories will stay with me forever.
And one of those finest memories was hearing him play this very remix and proceeding to lose my shit on the dancefloor.
But I now realise the reason it worked so well live was because he wasn’t just playing the track, he was playing its various stems and having heaps of fun jamming out with the snare rolls, fading them in and out, making them softer, making them louder, whacking big fat layers of FX on top.
And that’s the crucial point here.
The Capricorn snares need to be given room to breath, otherwise they don’t work.
They’re from an age of freeform dynamic range when tracks were made with hardware instruments in bedroom studios and then cut to vinyl, as opposed to software-generated content that’s carefully manufactured for the age of streaming.
20HZ’s strident snares simply don’t fit in the overly-compressed world of digital Beatport bollocks, where everything’s loud and flattened, turned into a fat, long audio anaconda with few to any peaks and troughs throughout.
I can feel this rant bubbling up inside me and it goes beyond dance music, it’s a symptom of how all music is produced and consumed nowadays so I must supress the urge for now, because I’ll end up going off topic and writing thousands of words on the subject so, instead, deep breath…
1…2..3…
Overall I think this is a decent EP, but I’m trying to be especially mindful of my own bias here because of my love for the 1993 original.
Realistically, any attempts to remix early 90s classics are doomed from inception since one can never hope to recapture that bygone magic. Those days are long over now and we’re living in drastically different times.
And all the naff Age Of Love remixes in the world won’t change that.
The best you can hope for, therefore, is to either put an interesting new twist on the material, or at the very least, add some extra bunce to the bottom end so it doesn’t sound weedy on modern club systems, while also allowing us aging clubbers to enjoy some warm ripples of nostalgia.
This EP manages to do both quite well.
It has two dance remixes that are guaranteed to do damage on the dancefloor. They’re both solid offerings but, for me, they’re a case of almost got it, but just missing the mark.
So, surprise surprise, I still prefer the original, though ironically the tracks I like the most on this release are those that sound the least like it.
Instead, they opted to hold up a prism to 20HZ, splitting the core frequency and letting it burst into broader sonic spectrums, providing entirely new perspectives, with eccentric rhythms and mesmerising harmonics for our listening pleasure.
And that’s the real surprise of this release.
I came here looking for nostalgia and big marching band snares. Instead I found myself swooning over Andert Tysma’s ambient excursion and the absolutely batshit boombastics of Vromm.