We speak to Sukh Knight about his classic ‘Diesel Not Petrol’ remix EP!

The idea of revisiting an old classic is often a dangerous road to walk down for any producer. So often we hear classic creations revisisted only to be vanadlized and rebuilt into a manor which doesn’t compliment the original at all, which is not only damaging to the release, but also a tad disheartening to the listener. Today however we are very excited to see that a true success has been made of this remix EP as the legendary Sukh Knight opens up his OG classic: ‘Diesel Not Petrol’ for an official remix EP.

We were therefore thrilled to see Sukh Knight’s announcement of this fantastic new remix project, which sees both Cimm and Mystic State get involved. First of all however, lt us take in Sukh’s own hard hitting remix, which takes the original elements and skats them out with extended LFO lines and horn stutters to bring some 2020 energy to the track. Alongside the killer VIP from Sukh himself, we have to talk about the official remixes included. First up we see Cimm space the track out even further with a sizzling, sub heavy rethink, again reworking those instantaniously recognizable horns into a racous lead melody, alongside subtle bass tones and atmospheric pressure.

As well as this, we hear Mystic State get involved with the EP, as they pull out an official remix for ‘Shutdown’, utilizing those sumptuous sub textures and eerie soundscaping behind to deliver a fabulous final remix, dipping into the chord progressions and eastern instrumentation of the original here and there to give it a dash of extra flavour.

You can check out the remix previews via JunoDownload below:

We caught up with Sukh Knight himself for a quick Q/A around the EP, which you can read below:

Where do you rank the original among your creations over the year?

Its definitely still one of my favourites! Which is crazy because I made it around 2005/2006 originally and its actually got a mad story behind it as well which makes it even better! My friends hired a car to drive down to London from Birmingham and they accidentally put petrol in it but it was a diesel car!

So while we was broken down on the motorway waiting to be rescued, i pulled out the laptop and started making a quick tune and it turned out to be this! But 15 years later the original is still smashing raves everytime it gets played so it defo makes me feel good knowing ive made a tune that has stood the test of time for this long!

How exciting was it to reopen the project for some remix action?

To be fair I didnt even have any plans to remix it in the first place, because i know it can be a tough one to remix. But Cimm randomly hit me up one day asking if he could remix it. Ive always rated his production quality and mixdowns so i knew if someone was to do it, he would do a good job so i was interested to see what he would come up with! So i dug the original files out and sent him the parts!

How did you choose how to get involved?

Mystic State came to me to ask me to remix their track ‘Mahdi’ and i thought in return it would be good if they could remix one of my tunes! They was up for that so i asked them if they had anything from my back catalogue they wanted to remix and they said they would like to remix ‘Shutdown’. After that, i thought it just made sense to put the remixes together on a remix EP!

Which remix surprised you the most?

All the remixes are wicked as they all are totally different vibes, and they totally switched up the tracks from the original vibes which is what i wanted!

What do we have to look forward to from yourself for the rest of 2020?

Im working on 2 more EP solo ep releases on DAKU, and i’m also working on a few projects with PAV4N, who used to be the frontman for Foreign Beggars before they went.

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Follow: Sukh Knight

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Words: KXVU