The long version of 'Thriller' runs 6:13 and locks the tempo at 118 BPM; the short one, 4:31. That Michael Jackson's most famous cut opens this third volume in two formats says everything about the project's logic: this is not a remix album for the couch, it's a toolbox. DeeJayOvi's redrums —the work of a Romanian DJ active since 1996— circulate through professional DJ pools, and each duration answers to a set context: the extended edit lets the original arrangement breathe, the short one is built for quick transitions.
Eartha Kitt, on equal footing with Michael Jackson
Only two names get a double version here: Michael Jackson and Eartha Kitt. 'Where Is My Man' arrives as a 5:55 Long Redrum and a standard 4:33 edit, and it shares the exact 118 BPM of 'Thriller': you can chain them without touching the pitch, a wink any classics DJ will appreciate. Giving a 1983 cut the same treatment as the 1982 giant is the clearest hint of where the editor's taste lies: 'Where Is My Man' is the least obvious gem of the batch, and here it gets headliner status.
Donna Summer sets the energy ceiling: 'She Works Hard For The Money' runs at 137 BPM for 6:05, the fastest mark on the record, above the 135 of 'Mamma Maria'. At the other end —only Shakin' Stevens' 'Oh Julie' dips lower, down to 80— sits the surprise: Billy Idol's 'Rebel Yell', read at 84 BPM in a 5:38 redrum that smuggles arena rock guitars into a collection built for the dancefloor. Between those poles, the record splits cleanly in two halves: six cuts from 1982 and eight from 1983.
DeeJayOvi's Essentials series stacks volumes devoted to the seventies, the nineties and the 2000s, always with the same pro-pool philosophy. This third eighties chapter works precisely because it doesn't try to modernize anything: it takes 'Karma Chameleon', 'Ain't Nobody' or 'Here Comes The Rain Again' as they were and adds the one thing today's booth was missing, a structure made to be mixed.
Sources: Bandcamp · DJ Pool Records
