Chris DeLine

“Life ain’t short, it’s just a lot of people waste it.” This could simply be coincidental, but it’s fitting that the tracks on Guante and Big Cats!’s Start a Fire EP have been edited and cut down to their most basic, wasting nothing in the process. It’s not that Big Cats!’s beats are any less flowing or robust than normal, or that Guante’s lyrics are any less poignant—the EP simply takes the duo’s abilities and projects them at their most concentrated. One shining example of this is the remix to “One of These Mornings;” the track that the previously mentioned quote comes from. Despite coming in at nearly a minute shorter than the original, nothing feels lost between it and the remix. If anything, the flute-based beat of the remix adds a fresh complexity to the track that allows it freedom while shedding the excess.

Guante has offered up some commentary on the duo’s site for their upcoming full-length release, An Unwelcomed Guest, including these thoughts on the remixed “One of These Mornings”:

The success that the original version of this track had really caught me off guard. The Current picked it up and was playing it every day this past Fall, and everyone was telling me how it was their favorite song on “El Guante’s Haunted Studio Apartment.” I liked it a lot as a recorded track (Eugene, OR producer G-Force put together a beautiful beat), but wanted a more lively, uptempo version to play at shows. Big Cats! delivered. One note about the lyrics: I think a lot of people hear this as a “slice of life” song, a song about me walking around and talking to random people. The song is about DEATH. The sample in the original (and the hook in the remix), “one of these mornings, you’re going to rise up singing,” is referring to the fact that someday you’re going to die. It’s from Porgy and Bess, “Summertime.” Again, I like this song a lot, but the live version with our band is on another level.

[This post was first published by Culture Bully.]