The Blue Hour

'I'm going down the waterfront tonight'

Okay, so here's a weird one. One of the tricks I use to find random tracks to listen to is to search my hard drive for a particular word and copy over a bunch of tunes with the word in the title. A few weeks ago, I chose 'blue' and went from there.

I had to laugh when one of the tracks cued up while I was driving home. Evidently, I had recorded "The Blue Hour", a track from a 1984 EP by British band Raise The Dragon, at the wrong speed. I let it play for a while so I could chuckle at the helium vocals. Then something strange happened.

We went away to Denver for the weekend, and several times during that great trip, the keyboard part from that sped up track floated into my head. Evidently, there was something there. I had to wait until we returned to find the track, correct the speed, and replay it. Unfortunately, slowed down, it sounded wrong. It didn't sound 'right' at all. Even as a track re-recorded by the band (under the name Intimate Strangers, from the Charm LP) I missed the keyboard riff I heard that first time.

Thanks to Audacity, I got my remixing head on and got to work. I found that if I sped the track up to just slightly less than what I inadvertently did previously, and corrected for the change in pitch on the vocals, I now had a very listenable track indeed. Having listened to it about a hundred times, I still have no idea what it's about - but 'fire up the engines of love' definitely has a somewhat lascivious ring to it.

See what you think.

Raise The Dragon - The Blue Hour (remixed version)