SAEED YOUNAN
Remixed: From Beginning to End!
by DeepJ Max

Think back, way back… Well, four and a half years, but in the party scene, that may seem like an eternity. On October 7, 2001, Black & Blue was held, with 12,000 or so revelers dancing and prancing the night away to some of the best DJs in the world: Satoshi Tomiie, Manny Lehman, Alain Vinet, Stephan Grondin, and, from Washington, D.C., the duo of Saeed & Palash.

The latter, comprised of the team of Palash Ahmed (who will be headlining Circus on February 25) and Saeed Younan, introduced themselves to Montrealers on a massive stage. Their set, arguably one of the highlights of the evening, cemented the pair in the hearts, minds, and grinds of this city’s dancing public. Although the duo has decided to DJ separately for the time being, each of the boys is always a good draw whenever they grace Montréal with their presence.

As for Saeed, who has just released a combination artist and mixed compilation CD, Remixed, one of the best tribal releases you are likely to hear in 2006, he is one of those workhorses who loves to get involved in every facet of the underground music industry. Not only is he one of the top house DJs around, tribal or otherwise, his productions and remixes are legendary, and he is the main asset of Younan Music (http://www.saeedyounan.com/label.php), his very own label. In fact, Saeed has a #1 spot on Billboard Magazine’s Dance Club Play chart with his remix of 2005’s Celeda’s “The Underground”. Well earned, indeed.

Saeed and I, along with mutual buddy Luke Native, met up a couple of hours before he was to entertain the Parking faithful on January 20, 2006 to discuss his career, which included that faithful night at the Big O, and of course, his newest release.

Max: Thank you for the CD, by the way. When is the release date?
Saeed: Actually, it just got released Tuesday; last Tuesday the 17th (of January).
Max: Good!
Saeed: That was the street date, so it’s available everywhere. You can get it at all retail stores, it’s available on Amazon, AOL Music Now… they all got it.
Max: Star 69 Records.
Saeed: Yes, Star 69 Records.
Max: Peter Rauhofer…
Saeed: Yes, that’s the man!
Max: And your sound is similar; it’s in the same neighborhood.
Saeed: Yeah, but this one kind of projects more on, not so much the Star 69 sound, but more of my sound. Maybe three or four tracks on there are actually on Star 69, which are my remixes of original artists that are on Star 69. But it’s still my sound and it still incorporates what I do with percussions, the basslines, the funkiness, the proggyness – everything is within what I do and that is why it is called Remixed. It’s a remix of my own productions, my own remixes, accompanied altogether into fourteen tracks from beginning to end.
Max: And you’ve got great tracks here. You have “Sound Of the Drum” (by Suzanne Palmer), you have “Moody” (BPT featuring DM Binxter)… Actually, “Moody”, I put on a demo recently. Out of all the “Moody” versions, yours is probably the most unique one.
Saeed: Yeah.
Max: Yeah. Aside from the vocal, what else did you keep in there?
Saeed: Nothing! (Laughter)
Max: I didn’t think so!
Saeed: The vocal’s the only thing I used, and actually, there were some spoken words that nobody had ever used from the original. I think there’s like, about seven or eight remixes done of this song and there’s actually spoken words that nobody used, (so) I decided to use it; I used it during a breakdown. You’ll hear a guy talking, “I’m so moodyyyyyyy” – like that!
Max: Yeah:
Saeed: So I thought to do something different.
Max: Also, you have “Warm Leatherette” on this, which you talked to me about last summer. What did you do with “Warm Leatherette”? Because the original, it’s by The Normal, we’re talking about twenty-five years ago, and that’s 198 beats per minute.
Saeed: Yeah.
Max: I know Peter’s is different…
Saeed: The one he released, which was under Club 69, is more housey. Basically, it’s the same thing; Peter just gave me the acapella and said, “Work with it”! (Big laughter) That’s what most labels do anyway. They don’t really give you, anymore, drum patterns or anything – which I like! I’m not complaining because I love doing things from scratch. A remix is all about DOING the remix. It’s not about collecting parts from the original and just reprogramming it, which to me is kinda wacka! I’d rather do something from scratch. If you’re going to give me a remix and I’m going to put my name on it, it’s going to be my thing, my production. So, with “Warm Leatherette”, it was just acapella. All the production on there is all me from beginning to end. The same goes with every track on the CD. It’s all my production. Anything that’s from the original is either acapella or spoken words or chorus, and things like that.
Max: Right.
Saeed: But production, musically, it’s all mine. That’s why we call it an artist album, because it’s not just a compilation, it’s also more of an album as well.

Max: A lot of people don’t understand exactly what a remix is. It’s not an extended version. If you can just, for the people who don’t know exactly what a remix is, or think they do, elaborate.
Saeed: Say for example, an original track is out and a label comes to you, asking you to take that original track and give it a different twist, give it a different version, give it a different take on the original – not make it sound like the original or the direction of the original. Most of the time, people will take a track and kind of make it sound like the original, which a lot of labels don’t like. The reason they’re giving you money … is to give them a whole different project; something that’s going to lean towards, maybe, the dancefloor-friendly, something more radio-friendly – depending on what they’re looking for.
Max: Right.
Saeed: So, a remix is you take the original track and just break it down, break it down to its simplest form: the parts, the chorus, the vocals, the percussions, the drums… It’s like a puzzle! You just put it together in a different way. Taking the drum pattern, twist it up a little bit… What I do is that I just usually take the acapella and just program, from beginning to end, my own production. And that’s what a remix is. It’s taking a track and remixing it the way…
Max: … or re-producing it!
Saeed: Re-producing it, yeah! Exactly. You’re re-working it, re-making it, re-editing it – you can do all kinds of stuff. But the real remix is done when you take just the original and twist it up so it sounds nothing like the original, but you still have the main foundation of the original in there, which are the vocals.
Max: Right; and a lot of people don’t know that.
Saeed: Yeah, you’d be surprised!

Max: So how long have you been doing remixes? You were obviously a DJ before, I presume.
Saeed: I started out as a DJ. My first production came out in ’92. It was on Yoshitoshi; it was called New School Sampler. Yoshitoshi started a project to bring up new kids who were making some good tracks, so they started this thing called the New School tracks.  (Mine) was the first volume on that actually, it was my first production. My first remix was for Strictly Rhythm, back, back in the day – I think that was ’94 (or) ’95.
Max: Good days!
Saeed: Yeah, yeah! It was for George Morel, actually, for his label Groove On, which is part of Strictly Rhythm.
Max: Okay.
Saeed: I did a lot of stuff with them and just learned slowly and slowly and then picked things up. So it was in the early ‘90s when I started doing all the production stuff. And DJing? Probably since ’88.
Max: Since ’88. How’d you pick it up?
Saeed: Just in high school. My friend was a hip-hop DJ and we’d skip classes and go to his house and he’d show me how to scratch, and stuff like that. (Laughing) Then, on the weekends, when we used to have high school parties, (when) their parents were out of town, we’d lug all our speakers and stuff and start doing house parties. He went into the navy and I went to college, so he didn’t have anything to do with his equipment, so he kind of gave it all to me – and I just picked it up all by myself. I wasn’t too keen about hip-hop, but I played hip-hop because that’s what he showed me. So when I got all his equipment, I started kind of venturing into more new wave, more hi-NRG stuff, and things like that, and finding my niche.
Max: And when was your first professional gig?
Saeed: It was in ’91, right when I graduated from high school, I started playing at a local club in D.C. called the Fifth Column, which is actually one of the best clubs. Scott Henry was playing there, Feelgood was playing there – it was kinda weird being with those kind of guys because I was always looking up to them. So, in ’91, I started playing at the Fifth Column and they liked what I was doing. They started a night called Warp on Wednesday night and I was a regular at that event, and it kind of picked up from there.
Max: Were you like a bar rat over there, and that’s how you got in?
Saeed: Oh yeah! I was out in the club, literally, four days out of the week. Sometimes I used to go to a club and just go home, shower, and go to school. I was in twelfth grade … so I was underage and still in high school, and I’m just club-hopping just to check out DJs. Not just to get messed up or drink or whatever, but to actually go and hear DJs and see what they’re doing.
Max: You sound like a Montrealer! (Laughter) What time do clubs close in D.C.?
Saeed: They all close around five… It was good; those were like the gold ‘ole days! We had a club called Chicago which I used to frequent. And on Thursday night, they had a big house night, and that closed at five. We used to go there, stay ‘til the end, go home, shower up, and go to school. My parents were a little worried at first seeing what the hell was going on! But it was good, you know, it was a good learning experience because it really, really brought me to understand house music. And if it wasn’t for me going out on those weekdays, when nobody else was doing anything… Weekends were all hip-hop, Thursday nights and Wednesday nights were the nights that really honed me in and showed me what dance music is about, house music, hi-NRG, and all that stuff.

Max: Cool. And how did your sound develop into tribal? – depending on how you want to describe it.
Saeed: I always knew what I liked but I never knew what it was until I heard (Danny) Tenaglia play at Twilo (in New York), and that was in ’93 when not many people knew who Tenaglia was and Twilo was just a total underground club. I went there for the first time because a friend of mine had suggested it. He said, “Look, you gotta hear this DJ, he plays your style, blah, blah.”, but he didn’t go into much details. So the first time I heard Tenaglia, he was playing tribal. I knew this was the sound that I liked, and I’ve always known this was the sound that I liked, I just … never heard it before. As soon as I heard it, I knew this was the direction, this is what I’ve been searching for, this is the sound that I want. And tribal’s always been in my blood because I was born in a middle-eastern background. Arabic music is all about percussion … but I never heard it on dance music. And the first time I ever heard it was when Tenaglia played it and kinda blew me away, and I knew this was the direction I wanted to go.

Max: Cool.  And later you’d get together with Palash.
Saeed: Yes, I got together with Palash in ’98 and we started Addictive Records. Actually, we met in college first. I was doing a lot of parties and had met Palash through a friend. He told me that Palash likes the same styles I like. … In college is when we really got together, and I started doing parties, and that’s when I had him play with me. We kinda talked about starting a label together because nobody was doing the whole progressive tribal thing. We decided to start Addictive Records. We started Addictive Records in ’98, we put out a bunch of tracks, and from there, everything took off because Danny Tenaglia, Erick Morillo, and so many DJs, Steve Lawler (as well), they were all about the whole Addictive sound. And we kinda created the whole tribal, proggy thing that nobody else had. … And from there, everything kinda shot up. It was great.
Max: Do you still have your label today?
Saeed: No, we don’t; we shut the label down. We had some financial problems because of all the downloading, things like that. To make a long story short, a lot of money didn’t come back … because a lot of the distributors went bankrupt. They went out of business (so) we couldn’t collect. We couldn’t keep an office because we weren’t getting money back in. We were putting a lot of our DJ money into a label when it should have been going in our pockets. Everybody started downloading, the digital thing came up, so we decided to shut it down. Now I have Younan Music which is a digital label, and it’s doing really good. You can find it everywhere from iTunes to Napster to Music Now to Beatport, DJdownload – everywhere you look you’ll see something from Younan Music Digital. We’ve just licensed (some material) for the Love Parade compilation, a couple of tracks on there. We’ve got a couple more compilations coming up. I think the digital route is the way to go.
Max: Good.

Max: Let’s go back to you as a DJ. Now I think this was the biggest gig of your life, Black & Blue.
Saeed: Oh yeah! The biggest as far as mass of people, yeah!
Max: What about emotion-wise, having 12,000 people like that in front of you?
Saeed: You know what? It was freaky because there were a lot people! There were so many people I could not detect movement. (Laughter) … When you are looking at so many heads, you can’t see a lot of people moving because the place was so big! So, to me, it was very nerve-racking. Dropping the needle on the first record, my hand was shaking. It was like you hear the drop of the needle, and the sound in that room is just crazy! So, it was scary in that level, but emotionally? It was hard to get an emotion out of the set because the place was so massive. To me, it’s all about the intimacy. I love smaller places with the DJ on the same level as the dancefloor, everybody feeling the same vibe. And when the place gets really, really big, I feel like music kinda gets lost with people. And you kind of look out there and… You know, I’ve been to big parties and you see more people kind of chit-chatting, and stuff like that. So there are people in front of you dancing, but you can’t see movement.
Max: Right.
Saeed: It’s hard to feel a place like that.
Max: Right. But now, if ever that would occur again, 12,000 in Montréal, you know they really feel your music.
Saeed: Oh yeah! I’m not saying they weren’t feeling it; they were feeling it that night, but it was hard to get the feel back because the room is so massive. To feel energy off 12,000 people, you gotta be – I don’t know! It was a weird mindset. I know people were dancing, I know they were moving, but there were so many people, it was hard to detect movement, you know, because most of them were just grooving.
Max: That was a great party.
Saeed: Yeah, it was! Oh yeah, I loved it!
Max: I loved you guys, by the way.
Saeed: Oh, thank you.
Max: I could say that! I’m allowed to say that! (Laughter)
Saeed: There’s nothing but love!
Max: That’s what house music is, it’s all about love.

Max: That would be a great place to end, but you were talking about intimacy. Tonight, you’re at Parking; 800 people. Fridays are a great night.
Saeed: Yeah. So that is going to be good to me. You know, something like that, everybody’s in front of me – it’s great! Like I just played in L.A. (at Latitude) last weekend for 600 people, and you could just FEEL the energy of the 600 people – at breakdown, at buildups, screaming, and chanting.
Max: Really?
Saeed: I’m expecting the same tonight.
Max: You’ll have a good time tonight at Parking.
Saeed: Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. From what everybody tells me, the people are all for the whole tribal stuff.
Max: Yeah. That’s the Montréal sound.
Saeed: Yeah.
Max: And it’s your sound, so thank you, thank you for entertaining us, and enjoy tonight.
Saeed: Oh, thank you! I sure will.