Nah'feel's remix of "She's Electric" by Nightwaves

Russell Gaskins, aka Nah'feel, is the true definition of a music industry worker: he works bloody hard and he works it. I met him at the peak of the SF house scene in ’96 and we immediately hit it off because of our passion for music and philosophical attitude towards its creation and propagation. And though he was working in the hip-hop field and was a rapper and beat maker, he had an appreciation for beats of any kind. An introduction to the deeper, abstract house of Omid Nourizadeh (16B), House of 909 and Don Carlos made him keen to craft his own beats in that vein, and his early experiments were pretty damned good. In fact, an airing of one his first tracks in the sadly missed bricks and mortar version of Primal Records in Berkeley got more than a few kids in there kinda weasely to figure out what this new toon was.

Russell headed down to LA in ’97 to work for the Vibe/Spin ad department and from there on to Arista’s A&R dept before settling at Chrysalis Music Publishing. He still makes beats, works on production for some big name hip-hop and r&b artists and in his spare time dons the guise of Nah’feel in order to bust out house inflected breakbeat numbers or add that flavor to tracks like “She’s Electric” by Los Angelean electro groovers Nightwaves (check out the original too, it’s a sexy doozy). Mr. Gaskins’ remake, though birthed in the image of Larry Heard and The 45 King, is a key contender for Balearic jam of the moment. And though the hot avenues of LA may be far from the balmy streets of Ibiza Town, the vibe sits just right.

Russell mellows the whole thing out, keeping the tempo at 110 bpm, adding a little rock guitar and just a pinch of jazziness. The outcome is languid but sensational, you can work the morning mood with this one, warm up with it, or shove it between the Stone Roses and Sheer Taft for optimum Balearia. You don’t need to have a beard, be from Norway or craft smooved out eurodisco to be Balearic, you can dwell down in LA, not care about that genre at all, and just make great music for listening and dancing to. Russell Gaskins does that. Nite Jewel, Nightwaves and Nah’feel, all the ‘Ns” add up to nice down in Los Angeles, and right now that city seems like a better bet than Promoterville, I mean San Francisco. There’s more where this little nugget came from, believe you me.

Orr

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