NYC’s own/the always ambitious Sporting Life offers up a remix of one of our favorite tracks of 2014, Ibeyi‘s ritualistic lead single from their debut album, “River,” sung in English and Yoruba. Sporting Life leaves the original vocals basically as-is and opts to pitch down and screw the rest with layered, crashing water samples, giving us a look into Sporting Life’s own ceremonial sample mining and production technique for an eerie, underwater feel.
You can get a glimpse of his vast sampling aesthetic through his blog Letterrracer, a space for him to host and promote his affiliates as well as his own demos and snippets – but for the widest-reaching examples of his explorations, don’t miss his work with NYC new wave hip-hop crew Ratking.