It’s to Colette that I owe a maxim about the role of the artist in the modern music industry that I’ve recycled (more accurately, stolen) and used a dozen times since then. “You can only sell so many t-shirts,” she once told me, “before you’re a t-shirt company instead of a record company.”
The state of the t-shirt record industry is as grim as ever, but 2014 and 2015 saw Colette attack like a hypermotivated Tracy Flick. She pushed her album When The Music’s Loud like it was her first and like you never heard of her before, with more hustle than you had any reason to expect from an established artist, from a Pledge Music campaign to wrap production to an unrelenting schedule of appearances (and answering cringey questions about being a female DJ for the 1000th time with the patience and grace of a saint).
“Oasis” wraps up the last two years with what is said to be the “third and final single” from When The Music’s Loud, so it’s as good a time to feel nostalgic as any. Four remixes offer the full treatment, from Scrubfish with an uptempo, jackin’ throwdown to the clubby and druggy Whitenoize cut and Poncho Warwick’s dubby excursion. I have to give it up though to 2X2L, who I’m not sure even exists, for a cool, gleaming remix that seems to hit another level – the refrain “Let’s be together…” fading into oblivion and and then silence.