Babi: I Said No
Thirty5 Records

I Said No is the first single on Thirty5 Records by DJ-producer Babi, otherwise known as Bergamo, Italy-born Bernardo Cavalli, and the twenty-first release overall for the Italy-based electronic music company. The single takes the tune for a triple spin, with Babi's original accompanied by remixes from Landmark and Sandro Beninati & Marcel Vidal.

Don't be thrown by the negative tone of the track title as Babi's “I Said No” oozes positivity in its deep house presentation. The tune nicely embeds a skipping snare pattern within a snappy house groove and embellishes it with loads of wide-screen atmosphere—whooshes and swirls, wiry bass synthesizer patterns, and a male voice's repeated exhortation. “I Said No” ultimately rewards on purely sonic grounds for its well-crafted arrangement as much as it does its body-moving potential. While not lacking in atmosphere, Landmark's comparatively funkier version is more focused on the dancefloor, and its pumping groove is punchier, too, which helps make it clubbier than the original. Beninati and Vidal's dizzying tech-house treatment swings powerfully also, and exudes an especially earthy quality when crowd noise is added to the tune's rolling pulse.

February 2013