Features : Hope, life arise anew in Revival House Project’s mix of house classic “Keep On Rising”

There are two excellent reasons to stream Revival Hope Project’s rework of Ian Carey’s house classic “Keep On Rising.”

One is that all the streaming proceeds will go to the Change Reaction Wildfire Direct Giving Fund for victims of the Los Angeles wildfires, which, in fact, was the inspiration for making the record.

But that would only be a good reason, not an excellent one, if it weren’t for this: Revival Records gathered 24 house music stars from around the world and created an absolutely gorgeous piece of music.

“Keep On Rising (Revival Hope Project)” opens with quiet strings and the choir in the background humming a soft beat. The hairs on the back of the neck start tingling.

Sixteen seconds in, a soulful male voice sings the opening lines:

Down in the depths of my soul
Feeling the loss of control
This inner spirit
So colorful

Then a female voice picks it up, a second, then another male voice, and all the time the strings and the background vocalizations are rising, intensifying, and the hairs are standing up straighter and straighter.

Piano comes in and takes up the beat with the seventh voice, a male, and the hairs come to full, quivering attention. Something’s about to happen, but the intensity backs off a little and then starts building again, building and building as more voices, single and together, deliver some exposition, higher and higher, high hats pick up the beat, all the voices join in, rising, rising, rising with the lyrics and the tempo, and every voice is coming straight from their heart into yours.

Two minutes in, the voices crescendo and the full house beat, drums and all, explode through the body from the pulse out to the skin.

And you feel wonderfully alive, hopeful and lifted up. Forget about anything that might bring you down.

If you don’t feel that when you listen, watch the video (link below). If you still don’t feel it, you might be dead. See your doctor.

The feelings of hope and the rise in the spirit are as much a point as the charity.

“The truth is,” said Peyton, one of the artists and a co-founder of the artist group Revival House Project and the label, Revival Records, “that unless you are a very big artist, the amount of money coming in is not going to replace anybody’s cutlery, never mind their home.”

The money is important. Twenty-four artists from around the world donated their time and talent in creating this track. About half of them spent a day at Dean St. Studios, London, and the other half worked remotely. Peyton, James R. Reynolds, the producer, and the other artists hope it bring in tons of money for Change Reaction.

“But I just felt like it was a vibrational thing, too,” said Peyton, “just giving all of us who are artists a chance to do something, to respond, to come together and put out this beautiful piece of music that is a message of hope, that, hopefully, will impact not just people who have been victims of this wildfire. People are going through hard times everywhere, for all kinds of reasons.”

The many voices complicated things for James. Peyton laid down a vocal track, then he and his Italian collaborator, Michele Chiavarini, went to work with keyboards and live bass and drums, “and we mapped the song out.”

“The complication with this song is that we didn’t know which singer would be good at singing which part, so, we had to get each of them to sing all of it, and then I had to spend days figuring out who was going to be singing what, and we recorded hundreds of tracks of choir because we stacked them all up to make it sound like a big choir.”

He worked on it in his own studio “for a week solid” before it was done.

“Keep On Rising” is a passion project for Peyton, James, the group and the label. This is the first time in the history of house music, said Peyton, that this many house artists have worked on a single track. Artists in other genres have, but this is a first for house.

“It is very unique in that respect.”

The Revival in the names illustrates another side of their passion — a revival of house music, with a return to more live performance. It was one of the primary reasons for founding Revival Records and the Revival House Project.

“We used to really go to town and use real musicians and nurture a song,” said James, speaking of house music specifically.

“Then that sort of got lost. Now every kid’s making it using splice loops on the computer. The whole idea of Project and Revival was to go back to the way of making music where you use real talent, real musicians, and create that kind of lush bed, that much more musical house that we hope will translate, not just in the U.K. but eventually in the U.S.”

The revival is also in support of community in music. Revival Records pays its musicians above rate, and they get credit and residuals for their work. 

Electronics are in the nature of house music. Peyton’s favorite definition of house is one he once read in a magazine: “House music is disco with better technology.”

But the point is to regain what James describes as the magic that happens when musicians come together.

“We’ll get a live musician or a few live musicians to come and play, and there’ll be little moments of magic where they interact with each other, like that moment when a bass player smiles at the drummer because they’re locked in, you know? We get these incredible kinds of sparks that happen between musicians, and I put those moments into the song.”

The programming is still there, he says, but there is also “that little bit of extra life that you get that you don’t get any other way than musicians in a room playing together.”

“Keep On Rising (Revival Hope Project)” is more than three minutes of those moments.

Listen and see for yourself. Connect to Revival House Project on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.

“Keep on Rising,” Spotify l “Keep on Rising” video, YouTube

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