DJ Rolando (The Aztec Mystic) - Knights of the Jaguar

DJ Rolando's song "Knights of the Jaguar" was released on UR in 1999. It's something that I keep returning to as inspiration, and so I decided to break it down to understand it. The form itself turned out to be quite simple; the backbone of the track is an 8 bar loop that repeats with minimal variation for the entire six and a half minutes. The various elements (percussion, strings, etc.) come in and out exactly on this frame also, which made writing it out very easy.

Despite this simplicity, I believe that the song has amazing timing and emotional form to it. It begins subtly, building layers to a string solo in the exact middle before dying down a bit and "deconstructing" the beat a bit, and then relentlessly building to a final peak where it forcefully ends.

There is another element to this particular song that we should also keep in mind: it was the focus of a controversy involving UR and Sony/BMG. The gist of it is that Sony commissioned a "cover" of the song almost immediately after it was released on UR. It sounds like a direct, cheesy rip off, and it started a war between pretty much everybody in the dance music scene and Sony. Sony eventually caved and pulled the cover, but it somehow popped up again, released by BMG. UR decided to release remixes of Rolando's song by all their big artists, and "Knights of the Jaguar" became much more well known and successful than the rip off.

It's something to consider if we decide to cover (or not) this, or really any classic track.

Link to a more in-depth article:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22131876/Underground-Resistance-vs-Sony-BMG-tobias-c-van-Veen#scribd

And the analysis of the song:

8 Bar “Frame” that repeats throughout goes something like;

[D 2 bars]
[G 2 bars]
[F 2 bars]
[A 2 bars]

The song goes:

8B no drums
8B w kick
8B w full bass synth
8B w added perc
8B same with slight sound changes
8B modified groove
8B added HH
8B groove
8B w clap
8B groove
8B string intro
8B string cont
8B string solo
8B string solo cont
8B string rhythm (last 2 bars kick drops out)
8B groove
8B groove
8B clap drops
8B HH drops
8B all percussion drops (no kick)
8B kick adds back in
8B no kick (except hits)
8B HH back in
8B all percussion adds
8B strings fade in (rhythm)
8B no kick plus alt rhythm strings
8B kick returns
8B alt string rhythm w kick
outro strings