Dominion - 11 Hours (Gai Barone & Luke Brancaccio and James Harcourt Remixes) - Lost Language

Ransack your back cat - that is the standard move when it comes to a milestone label release. LL legends Tilt were wheeled out for LOST100. Missing Pieces II / Stage 1 Remixes for LOST150.

But for this anniversary we’re all up in Whoop! Records repository, rebooting a Dominion classic from the year 2000 - the brooding prog trancer / personal fave - 11 Hours.

Rewind to 1998 - Nigel ‘Dominion’ Dawson behind the decks in Stamford, Lincolnshire - me, first pill - dry heaving to ‘Perfect Motion’. That Ossia / Dawson Renaissance comp with the marine green circular saw blade on the cover - Lost Without You, Spiritualised, El Niño, Snake Charmer - it pulled me through a portal - away from a calcified band scene / a short bus ride from Peterborough - and into the collective body of the late night dance floor. Forever.

Nigel Dawson’s productions and DJ sets, alongside GU / Renaissance heavyweights Sasha, Warren, Pappa et al - carried a melancholic, (dare I say) gothic weight. I was drawn to those late 90’s long cuts with wistful, cinematic riffs, inducing collective waves of divine sorrow when combined with the loved up rush of a Mitsubishi. Serious business in a dark room with your mates at 4am.

Recorded in Stoke on Trent at The MIDI Rooms with the legendary Nic Britton (Tilt, Breeder etc) - 11 Hours (cos that’s how long it took to make) captured the feeling of a communal chemical heartbreak - via tight drums, a cold wave riff, and a dreamy understated vocal - none of the usual bluster associated with dance music - Lianne’s vox closer to Cranes or Lush, than Candi-Staton.

Fast forward to now. An introduction, some miracle stems - chatting with the grumpy old ex-pat about that state of it all.
Releasing ‘11 Hours’ with new mixes is a full circle moment. There’s a wicked James Harcourt remix doing the rounds, sent to me whilst on a rare family holiday in Ibiza, natch. It sounds great with a pint by the pool. Eternal progressive statesman Dave Seaman wants a copy.
Then a chat with my old West London buddy Luke Brancaccio. His rich vein of collaborative form with Gai Barone sets the A&R gears in motion.

After several years spent digging into the youth fuelled, psychedelic, raw-trance underground - a return to our progressive heritage for this one feels right. We are not wrong. Gai and Luke deliver a deep, dubby interpretation - hypnosis dialled up, vocal gated - and already dropped by John Digweed in a Buenoes Ares B2B with The Man Like.

We strike a deal with James Harcourt, whose gorgeous full vocal rework has been quietly doing damage on dance floors all around the world since before that Ibiza holiday - and LOST200 is born.

We’ve even channelled the original artwork, moving away from the cut and paste punk of the past couple of years, back to the straight lines / space of LOST001 - Origin.

Where next? Who knows. The Greeks gave us two words for time - chronos, the tyrannical clock that grinds everything down, and kairos, the charged moment that erupts outside of ordinary time. The industry - chronos. The music - kairos.

No matter what, it has been an honour and a pleasure to have lived this.