The remixes
Danny Byrd's Superstylin is a 2021 rework of Groove Armada's record, the newest entry in a remix line that opened when BBC Radio 1's Fabio championed Byrd's remix of London Elektricity's Wishing Well in 2000.
- Wishing Well remix championed 2000
- Sweet Harmony UK Singles peak No. 64
- Ministry of Sound signing October 2021
Danny Byrd, the drum and bass producer from Bath best known for his Hospital Records albums and singles, keeps a parallel record as a remixer, and 3 named works anchor it across 21 years: the remix of London Elektricity's Wishing Well (2000), the remake of Liquid's Sweet Harmony (2010) and the rework of Groove Armada's Superstylin (2021).
Each stage of that line has its own weight, and the newest carries the page's central question.
Superstylin (2021): the Groove Armada rework
Superstylin, in Danny Byrd's catalogue, is a rework of Groove Armada's track that Byrd released in 2021, the year he signed with Ministry of Sound in October. The signing supplies the sourced label context for the period. What the rework confirms is the shape of the whole remix record: Byrd takes another act's record and rebuilds it under his own name, as he first did 21 years earlier with Wishing Well.
Wishing Well (2000): the remix Fabio championed
Wishing Well is the earliest named remix in the record: in 2000, BBC Radio 1's Fabio championed Danny Byrd's remix of London Elektricity's Wishing Well. The champion mattered because of what Fabio was building at the time. From 1999, alongside Sarah Sandy, Fabio championed the style he named liquid funk, launching a same-named compilation on their Creative Source label; the style grew massively around 2003 to 2004 and by 2005 stood among the biggest-selling drum and bass subgenres, with Hospital Records among its main labels and artists such as Calibre, Netsky, LTJ Bukem, High Contrast, London Elektricity and Nu:Tone among its proponents. A Byrd remix carried by that DJ on national radio, 1 year after Byrd signed to Hospital Records in 1999, placed the young producer inside the current that would carry his later albums. The next charting step came 10 years later with Sweet Harmony.
Sweet Harmony (2010): the remake that charted
Sweet Harmony is the remix work with the numbers: Danny Byrd's remake of Liquid's Sweet Harmony reached No. 64 on the UK Singles Chart on 7 February 2010, his first UK Singles Chart entry, and No. 6 on the UK Dance Chart. That a remake, rather than an original production, delivered the first Singles Chart entry says how central remixing is to the Byrd record. The originals that followed in the same stretch are set out on The singles page: We Can Have It All reached No. 144 UK and No. 22 UK Dance in 2010, and Ill Behaviour reached No. 36 UK and No. 7 UK Dance. Beside those singles, the remix work kept its own channel through the label that released nearly everything else Byrd made, Hospital Records.
Remix work inside Hospital Records
Remix work around Danny Byrd runs through his home label. Hospital Records, the British independent started in 1996 by Tony Colman and Chris Goss and based in East London, primarily releases drum and bass, and its artists have included High Contrast, Netsky, Camo & Krooked, Logistics, Nu:Tone, Metrik, Fred V & Grafix and S.P.Y. High Contrast in particular appears alongside Byrd both on that roster and among the named proponents of liquid funk, so the 2 producers' names sit side by side in the label's history, and the link runs through the work itself: remixes by Byrd for High Contrast, alongside contributions to the Hospital Records compilation Weapons of Mass Creation, followed the 2000 Wishing Well remix. The raw material of all this remixing is described on the Drum and bass page: fast breakbeats, typically 165 to 185 beats per minute, with heavy bass and sub-bass lines, samples and synthesizers, the frame a remixer keeps or breaks when rebuilding a track.
How the remixes sit against the albums and the singles
The remixes frame the rest of the catalogue rather than follow it. The Wishing Well remix (2000) predates the debut album Supersized (26 May 2008) by 8 years; the Sweet Harmony remake charted on 7 February 2010, 8 months before Rave Digger reached No. 68 on the UK Albums Chart in October 2010; and the Superstylin rework (2021) arrived 3 years after the last album, Atomic Funk (7 September 2018). The albums are treated in order on The albums page and the charting originals on The singles page; the remix record is the thread that runs before, between and after them, from a Radio 1 champion in 2000 to a Ministry of Sound signing in October 2021.