By now, Hotel Garuda‘s imprint is on everyone’s radar. Between continually lighting up the internet and featured sets at renowned cultural epicenters like Coachella, the duo, which is comprised of Manila Killa and Candle Weather, continues to mystify with their blend of the old and the new. Which is why their latest remix, a flip of Blonde and Craig David’s track “Nothing Like This,” makes absolute sense.
Much like Hotel Garuda, both Blonde and Craig David have found themselves in a spotlight which shines down from the house music heavens that puts them into mainstream consciousness or, at the very least, the consciousness of the young who scour the folds of the internet for that ‘new new.’ It’s a tough place to be, but it can lead to some serendipitous opportunities and having the vibe of Hotel Garuda collide with that of Blonde while the swooning Craig David hangs in the balance is more than serendipitous. It’s straight up perfect. Blonde’s pop-leaning house music, when refitted by Hotel Garuda’s very youthful, very self-aware production style, comes off as uniquely current and brilliantly cliché for the sake of being hip. And with David’s vocal delivery, which calls out to early 2000’s R&B staples such as Usher or Mario, the track takes an interesting turn within the context of the duo at the remix board; Hotel Garuda is popular at a time when early 2000’s music, while it may have been seen as corny a few years ago, is at an all time nostalgia factor with early twenty-somethings feeling no shame screaming the words to classics like R. Kelly’s “Ignition.”
All of this culminates to a sinisterly poppy remix that is going to be on every college kid’s pre-game mixtape as we sit in the middle of finals season.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/260294876″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]