Hard to believe, but this classic by Boys Noize & Erol Alkan turns fifteen in 2025.
Recorded at Boys Noize Studio, Berlin & Hercules Studios, London and upon release Dave and Steph immediately started playing it in their dj sets.
There are 2 official releases of ‘Lemonade’, the 12″ with the ‘tennis’ cover which has ‘Avalanche’ on the A side and ‘Lemonade’ on the AA side.
But more interesting was the 12″ picture disk, which looks like an oversized CD-r. This one had a Gesaffelstain remix on the flip side.
There’s some more information and Erol’s thoughts about the track on the Phantasy website:
Erol Alkan: “By the time this came out in 2010, ‘Lemonade’ was by far the biggest record I’d been involved in, watching it grow day by day was surreal, the realisation that these tracks cannot be designed, and it’s the public who truly determine what is a real ‘hit’, however you choose to measure this. It’s now 10 years old, and I remember it fondly, and even though I’ve rarely played it over the last few years, it’s sweet to see the occasional mobile phone in the crowd scrolling messages like ‘PLAY LEMONADE!!’.
Let me pour you a glass of cold, hard facts about Phantasy’s 8th single:
- This single was a follow up to ‘Waves’ and ‘Death Suite’, a double A which we released on BNR.
- Of those tracks, ‘Death Suite’ was made at my studio in around 3 or 4 hours from start to finish. ‘Waves’ took much longer and was a real game of tennis between our respective studios.
- ‘Avalanche’ was made in a few hours at Alex’s studio, built around some pitched down, droney voices we put against the little arpeggio which runs through the track. It’s perhaps one of the only techno records to feature a snippet of Dylan Thomas. It was later to be vocalled by Jarvis Cocker, but we will get to that in a few releases time…
- ‘Lemonade’ took a bit longer to make. It was originally titled ‘The Other Side’ and almost made the cut, until we decided it wasn’t good enough and put it in the folder where music goes to die, unless miraculously ressurected. It wasn’t until I found a jam session between Alex and me and heard a riff which both of us had forgotten existed, that I took the riff and placed it over the drums from ‘The Other Side’. The first version of ‘Lemonade’ was born and we completed it when Alex came to London for a show we were both playing at that night.
- That show (on the 5th Feb 2010) was Decked Out’s 10th Anniversary, a charity event at The Coronet for Kids Company. I was playing b2b with Xavier De Rosnay and Alex was paired with Dj Mehdi so it was debuted twice that night. The reaction kinda forced us to release the track as soon as possible.
- Despite a few people claiming they have heard that riff before, it is not a sample.
- I designed the sleeve at the 11th hour, the night before the record was pressed.
- 250 copies were pressed on transparent vinyl, and a further 500 on black. It was released on the 25th April 2010 and the vinyl sold out in a week.
- Both ‘Avalanche’ and ‘Lemonade’ were to be released as singles in their own right, with a new set of remixes and versions.
- Pharrell told me he thought it was ‘dope’”
One year before the release of ‘Lemonade’, 2manydjs started their live ‘Under The Covers’ set. They made an edit and visual for the live set and you can watch that edit above.
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