The Love Injection project of Paul Rafaelle and Barbie Bertisch reached its tenth birthday recently, celebrating at, where else, but NYC institution, Public Records. It’s a significant landmark and demonstrates the superior dedication these two have in holding up the torch for all things New York. Their fanzine by the same name is now on issue 70 and their weekly Lot Radio show flips between old and new while maintaining that consistent balance of groove and rhythm.

As well as the ‘zine and radio, the Love Injection label has been steadily dropping a perfectly curated combination of original music and remix work from the likes of Phil Moffa, Conclave and Barbie herself. Amongst those remixes, a recent highlight was for Japanese producer Yasushi Ide. That version, the Kaoru Inoue take on his ‘A Place In the Sun’ shone a light on Ide in a new way.

Now via his own Grand Gallery imprint (and shop of the same name), Love Injection and Yasushi combine operations again, this time tackling the track ‘Galactic Beats’ from 2022’s Cosmic Suite as part of the wider ‘The Journey’ remix project. The original is an afrobeat inflected workout of the highest order. For their version, the beats are given more room to breathe and a healthy dose of spacey bounce is merged nicely. They stretch the music out into something altogether outer worldly, while keeping the original’s underlying heart and soul firmly in place. Doing what all good remixes should do basically. The rest of the mix brings in a real eclectic horde of remixers from the likes of DJ Nature, Charles Webster (check his hypnotic dubbed out rework of The Battle below), Ken Ishii, Alex Attias and DJ Krush, all contributing to the Journey’s texture and taking the work of Ide into new and highly danceable directions.

The Journey is available now on CD via Grand Gallery and via Bandcamp for pre-order with individual tracks becoming available from 16 April.