“Some music actually gets better with time. ‘Best Track I Ever Produced’ by Krey Galin is a case in point, bringing to the fore a number of years worth of meticulously crafted instrumental work which is given a real boost and a real chance to be heard by a much wider audience.”
Best Track I Ever Produced is an instrumental album with a story in it that goes way beyond the music. It’s the result of a collaboration between father and son (Gregory Allen Jr. and Phil Allen) and their friend and collaborator Tim Steele. It started life as a bunch of tracks that were made years ago and has become a release that’s very much about family, friendship and the desire to get something that could have otherwise just remained in the vaults out there. For Phil it was a way of sharing the music that he’d come to love and a way of paying tribute to someone who had been a major part of the project.
The album has a very particular significance in that it’s the result of the loss of Tim Steele. Tim died as a result of his battle with depression and substance abuse and that was a very significant factor in the decision to go ahead and release the material. It’s not just some random instrumental collection. It’s a collection of memories, of creative relationships and of a shared musical history. To release it is to allow that work to go on and to continue to reach people, even in the circumstances that we’re now in. One of the most fascinating aspects of the album is its relationship to time. Gregory Allen was producing music throughout the 90s and 00s and these tracks have been sitting around for years before finally getting released. The team actually refer to some of the instrumentals as being akin to fine wine, getting better with age. There’s something very attractive about that in a world where so much of the emphasis is on constantly making something new. Best Track I Ever Produced is a case in point where a number of older recordings get a chance to be rediscovered and to prove that good instrumental music can be just as valid and enjoyable years after it was first made.
The recording process is very much about the sound. It was recorded in Stone Mountain, Georgia using vintage gear with the intention of getting a warm, organic sound. The instrumental nature of the record is such that it can be used in all sorts of different contexts without being specifically tied to any one lyrical message. The tracks are designed to be used in podcasts, films, viral videos and the like as well as in commercial environments (restaurants, shopping centres etc). They’ve already got some very positive feedback on the album from people in those sorts of contexts. The track listing gives the collection a very wide variety of identities, with titles such as ‘Baronmikey’, ‘Bakatit’, ‘Bsauseonjerk’, ‘BachataTr2’, ‘Candipant’ and ‘Cassity’. Other titles are ‘CitiblokBop’, ‘Deskbeat’, ‘EgiptHop’, ‘elektrikrush’, ‘Happy Go Lucky’ and ‘Jonesin”. The later tracks, ‘Mestica’, ‘Neochicago’, ‘Oshanvoow’, ‘Streetscallin’ and ‘Strongerthanevr’ continue that broad range of instrumental ideas. It finishes with ‘Endingcredits part01’ and ‘Endingcredits part02’ so it’s a two part ending. We’re not given any detail on the arrangements per se, but the breadth of the track titles suggests it’s a collection of instrumental pieces of all sorts for all sorts of different uses. Krey Galin is the artistic vehicle that gets this stuff out to the listeners, the conduit between Recife and the US. The heart of it though is the music of Gregory and Phil Allen and the memory of Tim Steele. It’s really a record about giving a piece of work a second chance to be heard. *Best Track I Ever Produced* is about taking tracks that had been sitting around for years and giving them a life. It’s a record about friendship, family and the sheer value of music.
Spotify, Facebook, Instagram, website, TikTok
English