I had a weird time the one summer I spent in Chicago. I couldn’t get proper work so I had to do a lot of manual labour and ended up so tired that I wouldn’t go out proper, I’d just drink Ice House or going to the worst clubs imaginable that were only full of other Irish people so I really shouldn’t have gone, but hey, you know, the folly of youth and all that. If I was there now, I’d be going to the southside to check out Ghetto Division parties and bore them to death telling them how much I’m loving what they’re doing these days.

I really loved the M-DOK Remix of D-51’s OD a while back, and now I’m getting pretty psyched for Rampage’s Southside Boogie EP, out next week. Ahead of the release the label has dropped two bombs for your pleasure, remixes from MaddJazz and Nader.

Nader adds splashes of piano, simple guitar licks, crashes and fade-out/fade-ins, filters, crowd noises and straight kicks to Rampage’s What’s That Groove. Strings that just linger on top of it all. I almost wish there was a Mr Fingers/Eddie Amador-style spoken word thing going on too, it’s a lovely housey number that harkens back to the early days of jackin’ Chi-town house madness. But these days Chicago has an awful lot more going on. The label isn’t called Ghetto Division for nothing.

[wpaudio url=”http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3914226/Rampage%20-%20Knights%20Over%20Chicago%20%28MaddJazz%20Remix%29.mp3″ text=”RAMPAGE – KNIGHTS OVER CHICAGO (MADDJAZZ REMIX)”]

Madjazz shouts out to those Knights Over Chicago with a trippy tech-style anthem that sounds like a house track over a darker, deeper beat. It even throws in some Beat The Clock-type drum patterns against that gurgling whining guttural sound that’s like a less acidic cousin of Josh Wink’s finest (or most famous) moment.

[wpaudio url=”http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3914226/Rampage%20-%20What%27s%20That%20Groove%20%28Nader%27s%20Chicago%20Mix%29.mp3″ text=”RAMPAGE – WHAT’S THAT GROOVE (NADER’S CHICAGO MIX)”]

Do I want to go back to Chicago? Hell yeah.