Hottest Flips: Latin Jazz, Vocal Stabs, Lush Strings & Boogaloo Rhythms

Australia-born, Los Angeles-residing DJ/producer Tommy Trash seems to be a busy man. From releases on Spinnin’ Records and Ministry of Sound, to official remixes for the likes of Tiga, Kygo, and Timbaland, to a Grammy-nominated remix of Deadmau5's "The Veldt"... “Satisfy” is his latest in a sling of thumping electronic/EDM music, sampling Philly soul vocal stabs throughout.

“My session actually started with the vocal sample. That was central to everything. Then I built the breakbeats and bassline to complement the hook. Then I eventually added the drop beats and extra synths. I kinda approached this tune more like I would approach a remix. I popped the full acapella in Ableton’s Simpler and played vocal stabs from different points in the acapella like I would with a traditional sampler. Then I’d freeze that audio and manipulate it from there.”—Tommy Trash

Ocean Blvd is a new collaborative album by German producers Tom Doolie and Cap Kendricks, and Grammy-nominated DAO who worked with the likes of Drake, Kid Cudi, The LOX & Talib Kweli.

“Cap Kendricks found the sample browsing the Soul section on Tracklib. The first time Cap heard ‘Happiness’ by Wesley Bright & The Honeytones, he thought the song must have been recorded in the 70s. He was super surprised to learn that the track came out in 2018 because the vibe was so authentic and could have easily been a recording from that era!

Cap pitched the sample down three semitones and time-stretched it with Ableton Live Warp from 143 BPM to 88 BPM—which is a lot—but it worked perfectly. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a perfectly matching vocal line that we liked. So Cap sliced up the whole acapella into smaller pieces and rearranged parts from the chorus, second, and third verse to a new phrase which ended up as our new vocal hook for ‘Tell Me Again.’—DAO

“It’s special when I get to reconnect with one of the first artists I ever worked with,” Grant Yerber a.k.a. YOG$ wrote on his Instagram upon the release of Young Fel 2 by Los Angeles rapper Felly. “Easy” with a lush sample of Shuko & keyboardist BASTi is their first collaboration since 2018.

“I wanted something that sounded celebratory, something that would make our first track special. I was listening to ‘Bittersweet,’ and it suddenly dropped into a real lush and open section. It sounded glorious. I felt it also had a nostalgic feel which I immediately gravitated towards. I added drums and 808 over the loops and it all just came to life.”

A new collaboration between Australian party-starters Yolanda Be Cool and Los Angeles-based house DJ/producer Dillon Nathaniel. After last year’s tech-house track “Tell Me Why,” this time they present a trip to sunny Bolivia.

"We love Latin and we love horns so 'Bella Es La Navidad' instantly grabbed us. We were looking for that South American flavour and found it somewhere while sifting through Tracklib. This time together with our great buddy Dillon Nathanial whom we made the tune with. We basically just did a really quick edit in Ableton and made sure the sample sounds good at the tempo we make our tunes at. That’s normally between 122 and 130 BPM. Once we know it’s going to work, we go about finding the most hooky parts—the horn grabs and vocal chops, in this case—that we can work into a tune that works in our DJ sets."—Matt Handles