Electronic 'Getting Away With It' (greg wilson edit)

Electronic ‘Getting Away With It’ (greg wilson edit)

126 bpm

Never previously shared

Formed by New Order’s Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr, formerly of The Smiths, Electronic’s debut single, which climbed the chart as the 80’s segued into the 90’s, also included the guest vocals of co-writer Neil Tennant, of the Pet Shop Boys.

It’s such a wonderful feel good tune, and by that I don’t mean a hands in the air type anthem, but something that subtly probes beneath the surface of the emotions, and really warms the spirit with its euphoric melancholy. For want of a better description, I regard it as a very human track.

For me, it’s a hidden gem of the Madchester era – something that you don’t hear anything like as often as you’d expect to, or at least as I’d expect to. So, as you can imagine, it was great to hear Henry Greenwood play his edit of it on the Dex Terrace in Brixton last April to a suitably ecstatic audience response.

I must mention that Henry, who hails from John Peel’s home town of Heswall, not a million miles from New Brighton, where I’m from, is someone I came across about 2 years ago via a friend, Gavin Kendrick, who’d sent me a link to his SoundCloud – Henry was deejaying in Oxford for the company Gavin was working for at the time. He’d put together a short demonstration mix, ‘Henry’s Roller Disco Mix’, which was made up of a series of well crafted mash-ups, including one part that particularly took my fancy, with the acappella of Diana Ross’s ‘Love Hangover’, working a treat over Sharon Brown’s ‘I Specialize In Love’. This was right up my street, so I emailed Henry to ask if he had a full version for playing out, but he said he hadn’t, as he felt he didn’t have enough of the Diana Ross vocal to work with. I emailed back suggesting that the Sharon / Diana mash-up would work well with vocals from both – I was confident from running them through my head that the lyrics would slot together nicely, both having 'love' in the title.

Henry said he’d give it a go, but I never heard back from him for a while and figured he’d decided not to try it after all. Then, 5 months on, he sends me a work in progress, asking for my feedback. It’s sounding really good, but there’s room for improvement, so I make a list of suggestions and email them to him. Whilst I was waiting for the amendments to be made I played the working copy at the Southport Weekender (May 2010), and then, the following week the final version arrived, which was subsequently huge for me over the summer and onwards. It was eventually pressed to vinyl back in January as ‘Special Hangover’ (on ‘Henry’s Edits Vol 1’).

So, after I’d heard Henry play his ‘Getting Away With It’ edit at Dex last April I asked if he could send me a copy over, which he did the following week. I’d planned to edit it myself, so I was thinking that this might save me the job, but when I listened back I realised that it had taken a different direction to what I had in mind, and it would be far easier for me to put it together myself than to amend from what Henry had done, which suited his own requirements fine. Here it is:
Getting Away With It (Henry's Rough Cut) by henrygreenwood

I knew I wanted a long intro – to let it all to unfold slowly, fluidly, so that the track creeps up on you unawares. The idea being to mix it out of the previous track so it grooves along for a couple of minutes, keeping things on a level, before the strings enter and the whole vibe lifts and swells. I also wanted to create a reprise two thirds through, so it seems like the track is just about to conclude when the piano and bass, in their understated glory, strike up, before the drums kick in and we’re off again for a further 4 minutes. There was a specific type of energy I wanted it to generate via my arrangement, a controlled kind of dynamism. The intention was always to make it an end of night / closing tune, so it’s almost like rewinding and playing again, or a ‘one more tune’ within a tune.

I sent Henry a copy and thanked him for helping to kick my arse into gear and get it done. The effect at the festivals, and also various club dates, has been everything I’d hoped for and more. Here it is at Bestival in September:
http://youtu.be/75WnsIwwXnc

I’ve lost count of the amount of times people have enquired about it during recent months. So, as we enter December, and with Xmas / NYE fast approaching, I thought it would be a good time to share.

Greg Wilson – December 2011