Pete Tong and Kölsch rework Max Richter’s anti-war melody for the dance floor

Pete Tong and Danish producer Kölsch have released their own version of Max Richter’s On The Nature Of Daylight. The track came out on October 2 on Ministry of Sound.

The release was announced on Pete Tong’s website.

This is a version for the Ibiza Classics project, in which club anthems are recast in orchestral arrangements. The track opens the fifth-anniversary edition of the album Pete Tong + Friends: Ibiza Classics, which is already available for pre-order.

Where the melody comes from

Max Richter wrote “On The Nature Of Daylight” for string quintet and released it in 2004 on the album The Blue Notebooks. He conceived it as a protest against the 2003 invasion of Iraq: the composer himself called the entire record an anti-war album.

“Kölsch and I have re-worked one of the most beautiful pieces of modern classical music ever written,” Pete Tong explained.

Over twenty years, the melody has become one of the most recognizable of the 21st century. It features in the films “Shutter Island,” “Arrival” and “Hamnet,” as well as in the series “The Last of Us.” The “Arrival” score was even ruled ineligible for the Oscars because of it: Richter’s piece was not original music written for the film.

Who these two are

Pete Tong is a British DJ and BBC Radio 1 presenter, one of the people who turned Ibiza into the world capital of club music. His Ibiza Classics project with a live orchestra grew out of a concert at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms and became a series of albums and tours. This season, he was also on the lineup of the Miss Monique residency at Hï Ibiza.

Kölsch is Copenhagen producer Rune Reilly Kölsch, known for melodic techno on the Cologne label Kompakt. Melody and slow builds are his signature, so Richter is natural material for him.

Taking a piece conceived as a protest against war to the dance floor is a bold move. But perhaps that is exactly the point: a melody that has spent twenty years in films about loss and memory will now play where people come together.