BEBEL GILBERTO: Close to You - Steve Hillier version

Dubstar disintegrated twenty two years ago, way back in November of 2000.

There were ongoing problems, many personal, many professional, but the truth was the act never operated on all cylinders again after the completion of Goodbye. And as I’ve reflected previously, I do think the main contributor to this collapse was not living in the same city. It’s not just the physical place, although Newcastle upon Tyne is a very physical place. It’s the constant stream of shared experiences that brings any group of people together. It’s a family thing, whatever you do, you’re never going to be as close as when you all lived in the same house.

So by November 2000 Dubstar had no money, no label, no publisher, no producer, no songwriter and no future. It was over.

I’d unofficially left the act in the summer as I couldn’t stand the constant dramas anymore, but I’d retained the confidence of my publisher and, crucially, the management team were still with me. And so I began a decade’s worth of international work with the Umbrella Group mainly as a songwriter but also a producer and in this case, remixer.

Bebel Gilberto is the daughter of João Gilberto and stepdaughter of Astrud Gilberto, whose classic ‘A Certain Sadness’ we had covered for the Not So Manic Now single. Knowing I was a huge fan, Tommy Manzi put me in the frame for reworking her song Close To You for her new remix collection. It was originally an album closer, clearly not for the dance floor. But gentle remixes can be exactly my kind of thing, so I took the original vocal and replaced the entire arrangement with guitars (Martin acoustics which I’d got in for the Landon Pigg sessions) played through an incredible Neumann mic I borrowed from Cat Goscovitch. My friend Phil Bodger completed the mix (see you at Adrian Sherwood’s Phil!).

This remix is the result, not on YouTube until now. I think it works rather well, I particularly like the treated vocal created with automated pitch shifting effect I made in Apple’s Logic. It’s a sound I would return to on the United States of Being sessions that began a couple of years later. Have a great Friday!