- Two of the year's simplest dance floor pleasures have been George Fitzgerald's "Child" and Geeeman's "Bang't": though utterly ubiquitous (and dangerously hummable to boot), each was too charming to really get annoying, even when they made their third or fourth appearance over the course of a single club night. Thus, the ever-on-the-ball folks at Aus Music had the good sense to bring Fitzgerald and Geeeman (AKA the Dutch producer best known as Gerd) together on a single groove. And while Gerd's pair of remixes of "Child" don't make for as deadly a pop-house sugar rush as they theoretically could, they'll certainly give DJs something new to cane as 2012 draws to a close.
Of Gerd's two mixes, the one under his new NY Stomp alias hits hardest: throwing some much-needed grit—but not much else—into Fitzgerald's Spartan groove, Gerd gives us a nice update without fixing the unbroken. The Geeeman rework takes more liberties with the material, leaning heavier on the Chicago touchstones that characterized "Bang't." The melding, though, feels like more of a stretch than you'd expect. If Gerd looked to augment or add to what made Fitzgerald's originals so catchy, then British house oddball Gerry Read took the opposite approach. The extent to which Read has transformed "Lights Out" is commendable, but in scraping out the original's ear candy and re-stuffing it with noisy drums and cloudy half-melodies, he's left it a little flabby and lifeless.
Tracklist 01. Child (Geeeman Rework)
02. Lights Out (Gerry Read Remix)
03. Child (NY Stomp Remix)