New Order! Probably one of my all time favorits when it comes to music from the past. As a young lad I discovered this brilliant band around the time they released Blue Monday, the first single ever that got released as a 12″ (not as a 7″)! From that moment on I was hooked on the synthetic beats, metallic synths, and danceable rhythms of New Order.

So what do you do when you come across a New Order midifile? Well yes, you take that midifile load it up in your DAW (in my case Cubase) and start making your own remix of a brilliant original. I say brilliant because that is what New Order is to me. The video below is from the original 80′s video where their producer Arthur Baker makes an appearance (so you know!).

Yes, … another remix but again a fun project. As I mentioned many times before, I do these remixes because a) I like doing it and b) you get to work with high quality vocal stems. For an amateur like me, that’s a real treat. For this remix I have put my music to the original Delphic video. Slightly editted to fit the new length.

The original: Delphic – Halcyon

Since I am present on Twitter with my account I am following Matthew Davidson. How this happened I have no idea. I have no recollection of how I got to follow so many other people. But, …. I do. Matthew makes videos, music, sounds, Max patches, etc. under his alias ‘Stretta‘.

But anywho, last week I got a notice that Matthew started following me on my Soundcloud account. In return I visted his Stretta Soundcloud account. And here I found something so beautiful I have to share it with you. I started to listen to his Brood XI set (EP). A very light, soft, romantic set of tracks with a main part for piano. It reminded me of my musical heroes Sigur Ros and Wim Mertens. Listening to Brood XI gave me such a great feelin, just fantastic!

Allthough this a strict personal opinion, I would advise you to visit his Soundcloud page and take a listen to Matthews set.

Stretta – Brood XI

This is an older track from me. I produced this around 2004. Sadly I don’t have the original Cubase project files anymore, because else I would have worked on it some more. There are some details that I would have done in a different way. Also the mastering was done in a rush and I would have finished the track better nowadays. Guess I learned from that.

The hardest thing when you make a track is to come up with a track title that covers the feel of the track. You don’t want to name it something stupid. This new track has a big city feeling to it, therefore I came up with the title ‘Urban Emphasis‘. Does this fit the bill? I have no clue. The track itself is a simple electronica piece with only a few sub-tracks. I had it in my projects list for quite some time. It took me a while to finish it, as I thought it needed more elements, but in the end… less is more. So there ya go!

Auxillary – Urban Emphasis by Eric Thoolen

Yes, yes. This turns out to be a great week for my music. First I get featured at Tara Busch’s Analog Suicide Free MP3 Monday. And yesterday I got an email from FilterMagazine that I have been chosen by James Yuill himself as the winner of the ‘No Pins Allowed’ remix contest. What an honour! If you don’t know the original it is a poppy, dancy, electro track. My remix continued on that and I made a full blown dance remix for it.

Check out the remix at Soundcloud