Premiere: Beach Season and Sadd Ghost Remix Adi Ulmansky's "Was It You?"

We’ve all heard the old adages about music breaking down borders, bringing us closer together and transcending culture, distance and the like. The case of producing duo Sadd Ghost and Beach Season, whose recent remix for Adi Ulmansky is premiering today on Noisey, is one such example that supports these principles. How else would a couple of kids from Cowtown be doing an official remix for one of Israel’s rising stars?

Ghost and Beach describe Ulmansky as a “mermaid” whom they are “lucky to have become friends with.” After finding out she’d be the headliner for one of their shows at Canadian Music Week in Toronto, they were secretly hoping an opportunity like this would arise. “She’s one of the most humble and easygoing people we’ve ever met,” they say. “After meeting and partying a bit in Toronto, she sent us the stems and we got to work right away.”

It’s opportunities like these that speak to the added value of events like CMW, which is – as it heads into its 33rd year – Canada’s longest running multi-day music and media event. “It was an amazing – good vibes,” Ghost and Beach say of their experience. “We were partying and networking every night.” They agree the highlight of the trip was meeting Adi, and are pleased the meeting resulted in this remix that they describe as “fun” and something that just “feels natural.” And she seems to agree, telling us that as soon as she heard their music she “fell in love with it” and despite living on the other side of the world, felt they had a great relationship from the get go. Thanks to the strong connection, Adi trusted the guys enough to put their own spin on her music: “Was It You?” just came out and I was really curious to hear their interpretation of the song. I must say I’m fucking in love with what they did!”

Sadd Ghost and Beach Season also sing and rap together under the name Obey The Crooks, and are the first to admit that while their style may be difficult to pin down, it gives them an advantage when it comes to remixing: “It allows us to play around and experiment. When we make our own song we try to showcase a style and voice of our own. But with a remix we like to play off the original artists sound and really see how far we can push it, yet still keep it in the realm of their audience. For this remix especially we wanted to show some variation in how we could play with Adi and Borgore’s voices so we created several different parts to the song to show their versatility and in turn, ours as well.”

Their interpretation turns the melancholic, dreamy original into an upbeat jam with bouncy drums, peppery horns and epic cymbals that contrast wonderfully against Ulmansky’s mystical vocals. This remix won’t be the last we hear of Sadd Ghost and Beach Season in the next few months, as they’ve already got a few projects with other artists on deck for the fall. We’ll be waiting!

Josephine Cruz was on a boat - @jayemkayem