José James remixed by iZem

José James was hosting a remix competition, and I decided to give it a shot. That’s how I ended up with the stems for this track. I tried matching his vocals to one of my beats, but some of the melodies clashed with my instrumental. I ended up chopping out the parts that didn’t fit, which gave it that unusual, stuttering vocal effect. I’m not sure whether José ever liked it—I never got any feedback—but Gilles Peterson did spin it on his BBC radio show. Later, I tried recording a different vocalist over the same instrumental, but it didn’t really work. So if anyone’s interested in giving it a go, drop me a line!