Artist: George Cochrane
Title: The Key Is In The Lock
Label: Unpopular Music (UK)
Cat No: UPM003
Style: Eclectic/Deep House
1. Radio Edit
2. George's DJ Mix
3. Brown Mix
4. The Littlemen Mix
5. Brown Radio Edit
George Cochrane takes some time-out from recording gems such as ‘My Synthesizer Won’t Behave’ and ‘Running Down’ on his home base label Prismatic Tracks to pen ‘The Key Is In The Lock’ for Nottingham’s newest and most exciting imprint Unpopular Music. Since their first release in July, Unpopular haven’t been afraid to push boundaries and explore new territory and this release is further testament to that open-mindedness.
Cochrane’s original version shows his talents stretch further than 4/4 house with his self-sung vocal complemented by glitchy, electronic and broken beat production styles. His DJ edit takes things back to more familiar house territory while retaining the leftfield quirkiness of the original. Label owners Brown bring live instrumentation to the table with lead singer Benjamin McCourt re-recording the vocal. Finally Nottingham’s The Littlemen provide the dancefloor focussed mix with typically punching beats, chopped up vocals and a monster bassline which could only have originated in the East Midlands.
George Cochrane, also known as Origami, spent years playing a variety of instruments in rock, funk and jazz bands before being bitten savagely by the electronic music bug in the mid-nineties. Already locked in the studio most nights studying audio engineering, he quickly found that the DIY aspect of this new music fit perfectly with his obsessive drive to create the sounds he heard in his head. He started Newstylesound Recordings at the turn of the millennium to feature his tech house duo DJ2 (with Funkmotor). Their first single, ‘Plural’ was an underground smash, and was scooped up by "Evil" Eddie Richards for his critically acclaimed mix CD on Fabric. Further DJ2 singles, as well as releases with Andrew Phelan on labels such as Prismatic, Eight-Tracks, Drop Music and Amenti share his core aesthetic: wide ranging live instrumentation married with sizzling cutting-edge production and heavy doses of jazz and funk. More recently Cochrane started to miss the songwriting-heavy days of his past and so decided to lock himself in the studio with little more than a drumset, guitars and a couple of keyboards. He finally emerged with the songs that made up his solo album ‘The White Pinecone’, from which ‘The Key Is In The Lock’ was chosen.
Brown are fronted by singer, songwriter and producer Benjamin McCourt and have appeared on various independent record labels over the past few years including Aroma from Belgium, Prismatic Tracks from the USA and several in their home city: Drop Music, Mobile Trax and Myna Music. With a catalogue of over 60 songs to their name and a budding career on the live circuit, Brown recently set up Unpopular Music to focus more on developing the band following some stunning live shows around the UK.
The Littlemen are another product of the East Midlands’ unrivalled deep house scene, alongside such artists as Crazy P, Inland Knights and Da Sunlounge. Following a similar route to their contemporaries, their journey began with the region’s legendary soundsystems. The duo of Gavin Belton and Steve Lee have since racked up a string of releases for respected labels such as Drop Music, Tango, Aroma, Lowdown and Amenti, while also establishing their own label Mobile Trax.