The Vitals:

Label: Sweet Rains Records
Genre: House
Number of Tracks: 7
How to Obtain: www.itunes.com

Factor Scores:

Production Quality: 8.5
Programming and Arrangement: 8.5
Entertainment Quality: 7.0
Total: 8.0 - Great

Z's Take:

From New York City's hair-stylist turned singer, D'Andre, comes the new house single, "Whatever". This slick-sounding single is produced by Wolfram Dettki, (who produced pop/dance singer Amber) with soulful R&B textured vocals from D'Andre. This single includes the original track and 6 remixes: 3 extended mixes and 3 radio mixes.

The original track of "Whatever" is a liquid-sounding, club-ready house track. It begins with typical commercial breaks and piano-synths and evolves subliminally into a piano pop-dance track. D'Andre steps up to the mic at about thirty seconds in, with his smooth vocals that bring the feel of the late nineties radio dance hits. Although his vocal style would be considered R&B, the danceable bounce to this track will please most club-goers.

Wolfram Dettki pulls no punches on the quality and production of this track. It is super smooth and flawless. The near perfect track under D'Andre's vocals solidifies the final song into a quality—albeit clichéd—radio hit.

On to the remixes…. The first two remixes are by producers Corbo & Atchison. The radio mix starts out with a touch of acid and some nice 4-beat kicks. It slowly evolves into another danceable, yet ultimately predictable, remix of the original. Then the Corbo & Atchison extended remix drops some nice minimal kick and bass at the beginning and takes a few minutes of trance-touched production before it drops back into the vocals and keeps the groove going until the end.

The second pair of mixes is by the Sweet Rains Records production team (Igor Kisil & Johan Brunkvist). These two tracks are the most house-flavored mixes on this single. The production is highly clean again, and this time is minimal organ/bass-hearted house music. It is exactly what you would expect from a production team called Sweet Rains. The radio mix is jazzy and crisp with a huge amount of joy bubbling from its center. The extended mix doesn't stray much from the radio mix of the same name. It has all of the same sounds and jazzy 4-kick flavor. Essentially the extended mix is just that, although it does keep the vibe flowing through the entire 8-minute mix.

And lastly is the pair of remixes by Pathos (a.k.a. Wolfram Dettki). These two mixes by the writer of the original track are my favorites. They keep the energy of the original but add a nice 4-floored kick and some energized synth parts. The flawless production continues from the original into this track. Both of these mixes aim to please. In my opinion the extended Pathos mix is the best of all the tracks on this single. The extended mix pulls the sound of trance-club into the foreground and rolls for a solid 9 minutes. It is full of some quality builds and enough energy to keep any set in motion. The pounding trance-flavored track holds your attention the entire time.

In my opinion, this single is highly polished and ready to be placed in any DJ's collection but falls short in the end because it doesn't do anything new. It isn't pioneering in any way and is largely reminiscent of late nineties house and trance. I don't want to call the music outdated because it is still valuable to the top-40 minded people, but the single is not impressive if you are looking for a sound that is different than older tracks in this genre. Of all 7 tracks, the highlight has to be the Pathos extended remix, but even that sounds lacking in originality.