Fred Everything and his label Lazy Days Recordings welcome Milton Jackson back to the label alongside his new partner in crime, the great Ski Oakenfull.
Milton Jackson is back with a vengeance after a few years of hiatus with a slew of releases and collaborations with Shur-I-Kan, Matt Masters, and Ski Oakenfull.
Milton and Ski’s first musical encounter occurred in 2006 when Ski remixed Milton’s track ‘1998’ for ‘Tronicsole’. Milton reciprocated a year later, remixing Ski’s track ‘Illuminations’ on his own Primaudial Records. The two subsequently stayed in contact, with Ski occasionally providing keyboards for Milton, and Milton telling Ski the secrets of sidechain compression. However, it wasn’t until 2022 that their musical relationship became truly collaborative, with a track written and produced together entitled ‘Need Your Love’ released as part of the ‘Closer’ EP on Freerange.
Despite still never having met physically, Ski & Milton are regularly working together. Their latest offering is the Integration EP. The title track is a cover of the cult Library Music classic by Trevor Bastow. The track has been reworked to fit modern dance floors with added keys by Ski. The mixdown was handled by Fred Everything, who sparkled a few bits of overdubs – drums, fx and even glockenspiel. During the mix session, Fred had the idea to do a Dub edit of the original, but it eventually turned into a full-fledged remix, using the original structure as a backbone and dubbing it out with plenty of disco elements.
‘Got To Find’ was the first track submitted and it was love at first play. Classic Deep House tune with just enough of that London Jazz/Soul vibe we love, courtesy of Ski’s masterful keys, having played with bands such as Galliano, Incognito, Dave Lee, and most recently STR4TA (the new ‘super duo” jazz-funk project of Bluey from Incognito and Gilles Peterson). To close the EP, we have a solo Milton Jackson tune called Verve which was written just before finishing up the EP. Another space disco affair!
Such a great EP from these 2 giants, we can only hope for more music from them in a near future. They have discussed forming a live band so, watch this space!
You can now listen to the full premiere of Fred Everything’s remix exclusively on When We Dip. Enjoy!
Release Date: February 17th, 2023. Buy Here
Fred Everything: Facebook // SoundCloud
Milton Jackson: Facebook // SoundCloud
Ski Oakenfull: Facebook // SoundCloud
Lazy Days Recordings: Facebook // SoundCloud