Rewind of a rewind anyone? Next Monday will mark four years since this upload: Danny Byrd’s monstrous take on Liquid’s 1991 rave standard Sweet Harmony.
That piano riff! We called up Danny to find out how the remix/bootleg/cover version hybrid came about…
“I remember this clearly… It was 2008 and I’d just finished my first album Supersized. It was a nice relief from the seriousness of the album; you spend so long making sure everything is perfect to the finest detail, this was really fun to make in comparison.
“I actually made the majority of it while on the move on my fist US tour. It was a hard tour – very gruelling. No direct flights, lots of early morning starts. This was a piece of comfort away from home. It was my companion on the road. I finished it off on the last flight home and, within a day or so of landing, I debuted it at Heaven, London, for Hospitality. The mixdown needed more work, but the moment that piano riff kicked in everyone was all over it. Big rush, hairs on the neck tingling… You know the drill.
“For 18 months I kept it in house, strictly between Hospital DJs before Hospital decided to try and licence it. I’ve never really thought about it, but I guess this was the starting track that led on to the theme of my second album Rave Digger. I didn’t think that at the time, but that was definitely a stepping stone. I could see the 90s revival thing coming… People always want to relive their youth and I knew it was only a matter of time.
Going back to that time myself, before I started making D&B, I really wanted to make hardcore rave. Making those tunes is much harder than you’d imagine. It’s melodically complex . Writing a killer piano riff is really hard. There’s a lot of musciainship behind it. A piano player friend of mine tried to teach me to play last year and it’s bloody hard! I did speak to Liquid back when he approved this and he was pretty respectful of what I’d done… The respect goes both ways!”
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