Dexter Troy revisits Didier Sinclair’s turn-of-the-millennium house classic “Lovely Flight”, adding strings and French Touch warmth to a distinctly sun-soaked new interpretation.
As Serial Records approaches its 30th anniversary, the long-running Parisian imprint is beginning to look back through a catalogue that has documented several different eras of French house music.
Its new House Classics series does exactly that, pairing established records from the label’s history with contemporary remixes. First up is Didier Sinclair’s “Lovely Flight”, originally released through Serial in 2000 and now revisited by Dexter Troy.
For anyone familiar with the original, it’s not difficult to understand why Serial has chosen it as one of the records with which to begin the series.
“Lovely Flight” arrived at the turn of the millennium with a sound that sat comfortably within the increasingly confident French house landscape of the period. Deep, driving and subtly tech-tinged, Sinclair’s production relied on repetition and gradual movement rather than an obvious vocal hook, creating the sort of locked-in house groove that could simply roll across a dancefloor.
More than a quarter of a century later, Serial has wisely included that original version on the new vinyl release rather than attempting to replace it.
Dexter Troy is instead given the job of exploring where “Lovely Flight” might travel next.
His Acyleg Remix pushes towards a more contemporary combination of deep tech house and breaks, but it’s the accompanying Neon Remix that particularly caught our attention.
Here Troy turns towards another strand of French dance music history.
The underlying character of “Lovely Flight” remains recognisable, but around it comes a warmer disco-house sensibility, with sweeping strings immediately changing the emotional temperature of the record.
There’s an unmistakable nod towards the French Touch era in the way those disco elements interact with the house groove, but Troy avoids turning the remix into an exercise in retro pastiche.
Instead, the Neon Remix feels lighter and more celebratory than its source material.
The strings provide much of that lift, opening up a record originally characterised by its hypnotic, heads-down momentum and allowing considerably more sunshine into the arrangement.
It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one.
Rather than modernising “Lovely Flight” by simply making everything harder, louder or faster, Dexter Troy approaches it from a different musical direction. The result retains enough of Sinclair’s original DNA to make sense of the connection while possessing an identity capable of standing separately from it.
There’s something rather appropriate about that as Serial approaches three decades in operation.
House music’s relationship with its own history has always worked best when producers treat the past as something to build upon rather than simply reproduce.
Twenty-six years after Didier Sinclair’s original flight took off, Dexter Troy has given it a different destination.
And the Neon Remix lands somewhere considerably warmer.
Label: Serial Records, buy it here.
Format: 12″ Vinyl
Original Release: 2000
Series: House Classics