"Calling Me Back In" remix contest winner(s)! (Patreon)

Thanks to everyone who participated in my first ever remix contest! I received 72 submissions and I am so impressed with your talent, creativity, and the many different directions you took this song. I found myself humming your remixes and replaying them in my head, and at times I went to the piano to figure things out so I could enjoy them on a deeper level - the highest of all ixi compliments! Please give yourself a hand for giving this a go, especially if this was the first time you remixed something. You did it!

As for the winner...well, this was actually quite hard! So hard that while I can only afford to award 1 artist with the official title of Winner, which includes a 30-minute Zoom with me, complimentary pro mastering by Oddible Audities (optional), and a special T-shirt, there are 12 winners in my heart, all listed below! Congrats, everyone.

Please tune in this coming MONDAY 8/11 from 12-2pm CDT to listen to these 12 submissions (and apologies, as always, to the Australians and New Zealanders for the impossible time!).

I am also putting together a YouTube playlist of everyone's submission - check your email for instructions if you submitted a remix!

OVERALL CONTEST WINNER

MY TOP 12 REMIXIS

Absement - Calling Me Back In (Absement Remix): a true sonic and narrative journey through different grooves, moods, and textures, cinematic at times, glitchy and hard hitting at others, with creative and fairly extensive use of edited vocal chops that surprised me again and again! I often cycled between a huge smile and stank face, and cheered at every drop. This remix features a recurring sidechained layer that tells my brain to pay attention, like a warning siren. It captured both the hard and soft edges of the emotions while treating us to sick beats and elastic basslines. Well done.

Jason Bradford - Calling Me Back In (Jason Bradford Remix): This is a killer rock remix. Maybe some prog, maybe a little metal, djenty even, but with moments of breathtaking beauty. Well executed with acute attention to detail. Gentle at times, unrelenting at others. A huge stylistic departure that made me feel like a rockstar!

Matthew Murdick - CMBI: A Capella Remix: Speaking of huge stylistic departures, a contemporary choral a capella remix. Truly unique and meticulously arranged. Rich yet tender harmonies. It is so drippingly beautiful I can hardly take it! Points given for doing the remix in your own unique way.

Ground To Dust - Calling Me Back In (Ground To Dust Remix): Cinematic and suspenseful, dark and persistent. Futuristic vocal processing. Almost tribal drums, rhythmic strings, all leading to a huge climax punctuated by a haunting piano melody.

Tkivo - Calling Me Back In Again: Tkivo made the downtempo drum groove of my dreams, combining delicious triphop elements with brooding guitars leading to an unexpected, distorted vocal breakdown that I look forward to every time I listen. It builds until it breaks.

Wholtz - Calling Me Back In (Wholtz Remix): Gentle yet pressing, an intimate almost folky house remix. Gorgeous reharmonization that nearly brought a tear to my eye. I see such striking inner visuals of nature in my mind's eye when I listen to this. It's quite stunning and it captures the vulnerable side of the song.

Bantu - Calling Me Back (Bantu Remix): Calling Me Back In if it came out in 1985, but then we're catapulted into 2010 during the climax with tasty, textured synth chords and a surprise that still makes me punch the air when it happens! The fact that I picked this remix even though Bantu used rototoms should tell you just how well done his take on the song is! I am humbled.

Wolmar - Calling Me Back In (The Light Within.): A grungy, trudgy, yet inescapably pretty rock take on this song that responds beautifully to the power or feathery nature of the vocals. Excellent reharmonization and novel approach to the climax!

Oskar Baeten - Calling Me Back In (Oskar Baeten Remix): I think this could be dub or deep house, the kind of throbbing dance track I'd mix into my Ethereality set. Listening to this with bassy speakers was a true joy felt in my bones. Despite its beefy low end in the verse, this remix begs you to take pity on the protagonist's vulnerability in the chorus. I love the mirrored ascending and descending lines that recur throughout the track. I dare you to sit still listening to this one!

Diljeet Singh - Calling me back in (Diljeet Singh Remix): Come for the emotive pads, stay for the sick beats! Brilliant repurposing of the chorus as a prechorus to give the spotlight to an ancient flute that carries you to another world. It also transported me back about 10 years to when I DJed and spent hours on cross country adventures discovering and dancing to melodic trap to feed my soul.

Ordinary Annihilation - Calling Me Back (Ordinary Annihilation Remix): Reharmonization and fresh vocal chops cascading down an arpeggio of ixis singing "back", set against a bleak and dark world. It then screeches at you to listen to the protagonist's pain. Industrial and cinematic, it wants you to hurt with it.

Darker Than Black - Calling Me Back In (Darker Than Black Remix): Nostalgic to the max! This remix transported me right back to high school, blasting pumping 130+ bpm melodic trance on my 6-CD changer in my bedroom, and feverishly pumping out original trance tracks on the living room Compaq every week. Teenage ixi was all too thrilled to hear herself featured on such a banger! This remix delivers all the drops and lush pad interludes your little dancing booty could ever want while preserving the intensity and pain of the original.