We go 'Inside The Track' with Jimpster

Oct 23, 04:00 AM

Taste-maker, label boss, producer, DJ, remixer. Jamie Odell wears many hats and wears them well. Under his Jimpster alias, he has become one the most revered deep house producer/DJs operating on the scene today. His esteemed labels Freerange and Delusions of Grandeur continue to help break incredible new music and equally impressive acts such as Detroit Swindle, Tornado Wallace and Session Victim. From his UK base, Jimpster has inadvertently become a standard-bearer and custodian of the authentic house sound, and carries this flag to the four corners of the world.

To celebrate Jimpster’s cracking Mr. V ‘Somethin’ Wit Jazz’ remixes which are Exclusively out on Traxsource via Razor-N-Tape. We went ‘Inside the Track’ to find out more about them.

Congratulations on your ‘Somethin’ Wit Jazz’ remixes for Mr. V. How is it being received in your sets? & How are other club DJs responding to the release?

Thanks a lot! It’s been dropping really nicely actually and I’ve been able to play both the vocal remix and the dub quite a bit depending on the venue and party. The more uptempo nature of the vocal remix at 128bpm makes it more geared towards later on my sets as I don’t often get up that fast and I don’t like to pitch it down too much! The dub has been working perfectly as an early set builder.

Tell us more about the ‘Somethin’ Wit Jazz’ remixes. What was the main inspiration behind it and what prompted the musical direction on this?

Well I’ve always been a big fan of Mr V and this is one of three or four of his that I still play out fairly regularly in their original versions. I wasn’t really looking to take any remixes on whilst being in the middle of making my new Jimpster LP but when the Razor n Tape guys asked me I couldn’t say no! The vibe and lyrical content of the vocals made me want to keep things ‘jazzy’ but rather than being melodically or improvisational jazzy I decided to push things a bit rhythmically and get a bit of a dance-floor jazz vibe in there going heavy on the percussion and introducing a bit of an ‘afro’ feel to the groove. For the dub I spent a while finding the right processing on the voice to give it a more tripped-out, spacey feel. Once I found the right effect it was a fairly quick process to rebuild the groove and work out a new arrangement.

Production wise, what is it about the ‘Somethin’ Wit Jazz’ remixes that make them work?

I like the way that some of the rhythmic elements have a straight 16’s feel and other elements are shuffled. The rhythm of the vocal is quite shuffled so I made sure the bassline shuffled too to sit nicely with the vocal. There’s a lot of space and not too many elements competing with each other so it feels fairly powerful on a big system but still put some melodic and harmonic interest in there to inject a bit of ‘Jimpster’ sound.

Is there one machine, program or technique that characterizes your sound?

I’m pretty sure I’ve used my Fender Rhodes Mark One on almost every single production I’ve done in some way or another. Also, on this remix I’d recently got the Korg Minilogue synth so the bassline is courtesy of that little beast and provides some weighty low end.

What is the one piece of kit that you simply cannot do without?

Apart from the obvious Macbook running Logic 9 I really love the Steven Slate Virtual Mix Rack and Virtual Buss Compressors plugins and find them really nice to use for adding glue to a mix as well as a bit of dirt when needed.