Dodge City Productions - Unleash Your Love - (1993)

4th & Broadway ‎– BRCD 265, 4th & Broadway ‎– 862 067-2

Another banger from the Dodge City Productions boys, again featuring the wonderful  Portugese jazz vocalist Ghida De Palma on vocals. This was the next-best track after As Long As We're Around off the Steppin' Up & Out album, and  makes for another heavy release.

You get a radio edit version in the City Lick Edit, but not the full length or an extended version. This original rub still remains my favourite so I'm including the LP version as well for completions sake.

The Unleash Your Love (Unleash A Scat Mix) is a nice change of pace - a much tougher beat, with a dash of ragga dancehall style vocals give it a completely different vibe to the original with Ghida strutting her stuff via resung vocals.

The No Strings Attached mix is aptly named, being the regular City Lick version minus all strings instrumentation. It's nice but does leave me thinking the strings were there for a reason.

Somewhat predictably, I say go straight for the Album Version or the City Lick Edit to enjoy this track at its best. The other mixes are well worth a listen though.

Kymba

Tracklist

1. Unleash Your Love (City Lick Edit)
2. Unleash Your Love (Unleash A Scat Mix)
3. Unleash Your Love (No Strings Attached Mix)
4. Don't Worry
5. Bonus Track: Unleash Your Love (City Lick Mix) (Album Version) 

Download: DCP-UYL.7z | Filesize: 58.4MB

Dodge City Productions - As Long As We're Around - (1992)

4th & Broadway Records - BRCD 261

320 Re-up - Originally posted 06/05/2012 by me.

Combining an authentic jazzy Hip-Hop swagger with a sophisticated soulful knowhow and bringing it to everything they touched, DJ Dodge and IG Culture were two of my favourite producers back in the day. 

A regrettably short-lived career as a duo in their own right under the name Dodge City Productions saw them release an EP, a couple of singles and an LP, Steppin' Up & Out, and go on to remix anybody who mattered, infusing any artist with their trademark classy urban sound.

Steppin' Up & Out is a great album, but I felt it perhaps leaned a little too heavily towards Hip-Hop, and could have done with a couple more tracks like As Long As We're Around to make it truly fly, as it was clearly the stand-out track. Feels a little weird me saying that, being the Hip-Hop fan that I am, to speak the truth.

Both Dodge and IG have enjoyed hugely successful solo careers since disbanding DCP and are still very much involved in the music scene. Here's some further reading on on our dynamic duo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_City_Productions

Onto this release, featuring the talented vocalist Ghida De Palma singing her ass off, and the mighty Ronnie Jordan on guitar (no wonder it sounds so great), the LP Edit is a nice enough shortening of a brilliant track, but it saddens me there is no extended version of it, or even just the full LP version, on this CD (so I've included the full album track in the download to make up for that fact. Never say I don't look after you). Why only feature a shortened version of the reason you're buying the single for in the first place?? It doesn't make sense.

The script gets flipped in a harder take on the track in the Say You Hear Dis Mix; Ghida's vocals are re-sung in a more aggressive fashion, the beat is considerably harder; and it sounds a lot better today than I remember from the time when all I cared about was the original/LP version that was getting heavy rotation. Really good stuff. The Dub Dance version is effectively the LP mix minus pieces of the chorus, but is otherwise a minor variation on the original mix.

Rounding it out is the Whistle Mix of Young Life, which is a nice early 90s slice of jazzy Hip-Hop which, if, like me, you're into bands like A Tribe Called Quest or De La Soul will appeal to you.

Enjoy this, as it's another classic.

Tracklist

1. As Long As We're Around (LP Edit)
2. As Long As We're Around (Say You Hear Dis Mix)
3. As Long As We're Around (Dub Dance)
4. Young Life (Whistle Mix)
5. Bonus: As Long As We're Around (LP Version)

Download Link is here: DCP-ALAWA.7z | Filesize: 54.4MB