The king and I just re-do it

By STEPHEN JEWELL

There is no better way for a dance musician to raise their profile than to re-mix a song by a more famous artist. Just ask Junkie XL - aka Amsterdam-based Tom Holkenborg - who became the first person to re-mix a track by the late king of rock'n'roll, Elvis Presley, when he turned the relatively obscure A Little Less Conversation into a funky, beat-driven slice of dance pop. It reached number one in 24 countries, including New Zealand, introducing Holkenborg to a whole new audience that he hopes to capitalise on with the forthcoming release of his third album, Radio JXL.

"People who haven't heard of me before now know who I am so they will give my album a try," says Holkenborg. "The Elvis re-mix was dance music but pop music at the same time. It's something that I've been really focusing on for the last four or five years, how to get that balance. It's a really thin line to get it right. What I tried to do with my new album was to create songs that are only three and a half to four minutes long. They work as dance tracks but, at the same time, they work as pop songs as well."

Holkenborg was originally asked to re-mix the Presley track by Nike, which wanted the song for its 2002 World Cup advertisement, Secret Tournament.

"I've had a relationship with Nike for years, where I've done the music for some of their commercials. They then came down to my studio and asked me if I would be up for doing the music for their World Cup ad and that's when I did the Elvis track. It fitted so well with the images of the commercial and, after it became a part of Nike's $90 million worldwide campaign, it started to lead a life of its own."

The barely two minute-long A Little Less Conversation first appeared on the soundtrack for the little-known film Live A Little, Love A Little, although the vocal that Holkenborg samples was taken from a 1968 NBC television special.

More recently, David Holmes included the original on the Ocean's Eleven soundtrack, six months before Holkenborg's re-mix emerged.

"I was in a brainstorming session with three other people and we talked about the musical impact of songs in commercials," says Holkenborg. "A couple of ideas came out of that and the Elvis track was one of them. When I first started working on the re-mix, we were afraid that we'd never get the approval of the Elvis estate but we did. From that moment on, everybody, including me, knew that the track had the potential to be very big because it was an Elvis Presley track and it had official approval. It was also underneath a big Nike commercial for the World Cup and coincided with the 25th anniversary of Elvis' death."

However, Holkenborg was obliged to abbreviate his moniker to "JXL" after the Presley estate raised concerns about any drug connotations.

"If you do a re-mix of Elvis, you're not talking about some star, you're talking about a rock'n'roll icon," says Holkenborg. "If people are offended by 'Junkie', I don't mind cutting it out."

Holkenborg says A Little Less Conversation can be seen as a dry run for the more song-based moments of his upcoming album which will feature collaborations with the likes of Solomon Burke, Gary Numan and Public Enemy's Chuck D. But don't expect Holkenborg to play A Little Less Conversation when he performs in Auckland tomorrow at Two Tribes. "Because it's a dance festival, I will showcase the dance part of my new album. So it'll be me on stage with a bunch of electronic equipment."

As the name of his album suggests "my set will reflect night-time radio and will basically be a virtual radio broadcast by Radio JXL on location in New Zealand".

* Junkie XL plays Two Tribes, St James, tomorrow night.