Welcoming New York based Bruce Tantum to the fold who is a journalist of note with years of experience and musical nous. We're lucky to have him...

A good edit doesn’t have to come via the business end of a sledgehammer, smashing a track to bits before reassembling it into something nearly unrecognisable. One of an adept editor’s skills is taking a familiar tune, whether it’s known by the most casual of listeners or only the nerdiest of the cognoscenti, and with the subtlest of touchest breathing new life into it—and Velvet Season & the Hearts of Gold’s Gerry Rooney and Joel Martin are very good indeed.

The duo’s latest two-tracker, framed as another edition of VSHOG’s Special Versions and released on the off-again, on-again Resista label, proves that point. ‘Love Directions’ is a party-starting slow-burn of a track, its brawny groove built upon the main riff off of a 1976 tune that’ll be instantly recognisable to boogie aficionados. It’s a familiar few bars of music—a series of rich descending chords languorously draped over a solid two-bar disco-funk bassline—but simply by excising the extraneous bit and putting the focus on that groove, along with an unending flow of glorious instrumental flourishes, it feels invigorated.

On the flip, Rooney and Martin perform some similarly understated magic with ‘Love Jelly.’ Boasting an even more leisurely groove, the cut revolves around a noir-ish, trumpet-led jazz-funker off of a highly coveted 1973 library-music LP. You’d save a few hundred quid by foregoing the original, and you’d be none the worse for it, as they’ve barely touched the track, essentially just lengthening the track while pushing the drums and synthy bassline to the fore—and pretty much left it at that, keeping the song’s dreamland vibe while upping its energy level a bit. Together with ‘Love Directions,” it’s another worthy entry in the Velvet Season discography.