Remix: UNKWON Does “Love and Respect” by When Saints Go Machine feat. Killer Mike

On March 27, 2013, Stephen Mejias blogged about the single “Love and Respect” from Danish electro-pop group When Saints Go Machine, which “features Killer Mike offering strong and exciting contrast to Nikolaj Manuel Vonsild’s delicate falsetto.” Although the track left him “wanting more,” Mejias admits that the restraint from both Killer Mike and Vonsild made his yearning a good thing.

In UNKWON’s remix of this track, the Danish DJ leaves yearning at the door, and unleashes an onslaught of sonic manipulations, big bass, and layered tambourines, handclaps, snares, and bells transforming the track from one of self-discipline to groove indulgence.

DJ UNKWON made a name for himself in the Copenhagen club scene, which explains the elbow-flapping motion his remix induces. UNKWON re-cuts sections of “Love and Respect” and intersperses them with pitch shifted and phased out trap-beat snare rolls providing clear cut transitions from one highly swung hi-hat pattern to another. Home base is found in the slightly off-beat, fat, and crunchy sub-synth swells occuring at beginning, middle, and end. Quarter note piano harmonies lift in thirds for continuous ascension. In a song that once left a listener wanting more, UNKWON quenches the desire with beat-seeking rapture.