With any craft, mastery should be the end game. If you’re the proverbial butcher, baker or candlestick maker, you should always perform with the aspiration of being the best at your craft. Possibly lost in the excitement surrounding the release of the video for Duck Sauce’s (A-Trak and Armand van Helden) “Barbra Streisand” is why the song is great, why the duo are likely two of the best in the world right now at the art of producing records, and ultimately what lessons can be taken from their professional excellence.
1. Know your records – Can’t stress this one enough. “Barbra Streisand” is literally an electrified interpretation of Boney M’s “Gotta Go Home,” a song by the seminal Caribbean disco quartet put together by West German producer Frank Farian. You may remember Farian as the guy who put together Milli Vanilli. The group made AMAZING Carribean flavored disco pop, and was best by the exact same issue that crushed Milli Vanilli, as through studio magic, the lyrics to many of their songs had been initially sang then electronically altered by Farian, making the quartet good looking dancing people. The tracks though were lunch tropical disco masterpieces, and to hear them sampled is not surprising, but if in any way familiar with the group, “Gotta Go Home” wasn’t their first big hit “Daddy Cool” or their most notorious smashes “Rasputin” or “Rivers of Babylon.” Reaching down and finding what would be 31 years after it’s release a forgotten #1 classic, well, that’s just A-Trak and Armand van Helden styling on you. Don’t get mad.
2. Often it’s best to pretty much leave well enough alone – Sometimes a track is so great, it doesn’t require full remixing. Sometimes, you have to let a track ride. In any EDM generation, “Barbra Streisand” is a hit, because the original was a #1 single before. In a mainstream atmosphere where electro and Bmore club reign supreme, “Barbra Streisand” is a hit. The synths build into the sudden four on the floor swing of the breakdown. In letting that vocal fly, taking out the steel drums, and leaving it a string filled, kick drum, hi hat winner of a stripped yet magical disco track with the nonsense words “Barbra Streisand,” it works.
3. Develop a formula and let it be your guide. – The Duck Sauce concept is pretty much A-Trak and Armand van Helden making electro edits of classic house feeling disco tracks with mainstream accessible melodies and vocals, ostensibly while both are stationed in New York City. The importance of the city’s legacy as a disco and nightlife mecca infuses those tracks with a certain immediacy that wouldn’t be the same if they were made in LA, Chicago, London or Ibiza. 2009’s hit “aNYway” takes Final Edition’s hot at the time, now extremely rare “I Can Do it Anyway You Want It,” and in much the same way, with a vocal loop and mixing the guitars super high in the final master, you get a floor crushing electro disco mash that is utterly timeless.
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