Butter (Remix) – Nayan (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

When done properly, remixes are more important to the whole creative process than people give them credit for. Some see them as a way of keeping one song in the public consciousness for longer than they might otherwise be or as a way of selling the same track to the same people for a second, third, or even fourth time. But that is not their function.

Their function is to explore new potentials for music. A song, after all, never really finds a final form unless the artist says it is so, and therefore, a remix is a way of giving the original piece of music a new lease of life, exploring what else it might be and how else it might sound. And that is precisely what Nayan is doing here with his remix of “Butter.”

If the original incarnation was a smooth and sophisticated piece of balladic neo-soul, here it is transformed into an upbeat, future-dance floor filler. Nayan creates a brilliant dynamic by referencing the seductive flow and sensual pace of the original, the song ebbing and flowing between its original understatements and newly acquired driving clubland grooves.

The fact that it is a blend of neo-disco and contemporary dance, liquid, Ibiza-infused house beats, Western vibes and Eastern mystique, space, and energy just reflects the similarly eclectic nature of its creator. Perhaps only someone who has called India, Spain, the UK, and now Los Angeles, USA, home, is able to make music that feels genuinely global, transcending culture and country, geography, and even genre.

We hear the term “world music” banded around a lot, and whilst generically, “Butter (Remix)” is not that in the conventional sense, the fact that it was created by a global traveller and seems to belong in no one place or category, actually makes this song, in this form at least, truly world music. Music of the world.