The Reflex Reimagines Stevie Wonder

There are songs that can’t be messed with. They’re perfection. Mr. Wonder has a bunch of them. This particular song, “Living For The City”, while perfect in its own way, has been covered by a variety of people. You have Ray Charles’ version from 1975 on Cross Over. Then there was another by Disco Rock Machine in ’78. Even Toto recorded a version of Stevie. One of the most interesting covers was by Detroit’s Dirtbombs, who injected their own Punk Funk lyrics into the classic. I’m sure there were some others, but these are the tracks that stand at at the moment. However, I woke up this morning to this beautiful re-edit, while not a cover version, I still had to share.

This re-work by London DJ/ Producer The Reflex of Stevie Wonder’s is superb. No stranger to the remix game, his 20 year crate digging, DJing, producing, and engineer work have led his tracks to be played by DJs all over the world. Well known trendsetters such as Dimitri From Paris, Mousse T, Gilles Peterson, Ashley Beedle, Kon, Danny Krivit, Greg Wilson, Nightmares On Wax and many others have all championed tracks re-licked by him. These edits, mostly done from the original master tapes, often breath new life and expose these tracks to a new audience. In this case, a reworked beginning with hand claps moves into a beautiful electric piano intro that unfolds into a “Wonder-full” head on remix of this massive tracks. There are a ton of special remixes that you can check on his download page below. Sometimes you can’t mess with perfection, and other times, you can. Here’s one of them.