Twenty-five years after Green Velvet first whispered "I went to a place called la la land" over Relief Records' rawest acid-tinged grooves, the 2001 classic gets the rework nobody asked for but everybody needed. GENESI, MEDUZA and ESSENTIA , three names currently defining the Italian tech house and melodic techno wave teamed up to drag this Chicago landmark straight into 2026. Released on May 15th via Broke, MEDUZA's own imprint, the remix had already been circulating as a coveted ID since late 2025, ripped from GENESI's DJ Mag Italy radio show and hunted down by trainspotters ever since. First impression: this is not a lazy nostalgia cash-in. It's a genuine fresh coat of paint on a track that never really left the clubs.
Track Highlights
The genius of this remix lies in what it keeps versus what it rebuilds. Curtis Jones' iconic spoken-word vocal , that hypnotic, slightly unhinged "la la land" mantra remains front and center, but everything underneath has been gutted and rewired. The first drop hits with a rolling, sub-heavy bassline that carries MEDUZA's unmistakable melodic DNA, swapping the original's wiry acid stabs for a thick, festival-sized low end. The breakdown is the real money moment: the vocal gets stripped bare over swelling pads before a tension build that feels engineered for 50,000 hands in the air. And GENESI's signature percussive groove work in the second half keeps the track moving like a freight train where the 2001 version was content to hypnotize. At a tight 5:31 in its extended form, there's zero fat on it.
Revisit the original first — the 2001 video is still a trip:
Sound & Production
Sitting at 128 BPM in A major, the remix lands squarely in modern tech house territory while borrowing the dramatic builds of melodic techno. The sonic palette is pure 2026 main stage: saturated rolling bass, crisp side-chained percussion, wide atmospheric pads, and a vocal treated with just enough filtering and delay throws to feel haunted rather than dated. Where the 2001 original was raw, dry and almost claustrophobic classic Relief Records minimalism this version breathes in widescreen. The trio's production craft shows in the transitions: every eight bars introduces a subtle new element, a hat pattern shift, a bass note variation, keeping DJs and dancers locked in. It's the same trick MEDUZA pulled on their "Piece Of Your Heart" era records, applied here with surgical respect for the source material. The result freshens up the classic without ever betraying it.
Verdict
If you're a tech house DJ, this is an instant weapon, a guaranteed crowd moment that bridges generations on the dancefloor. Veterans who danced to the original in 2001 get the vocal they know; the TikTok generation gets a drop built for their attention span. Is it essential? For the genre, yes: it's the rare remix that adds to the canon instead of diluting it, and it cements the GENESI/MEDUZA/ESSENTIA axis as the team to watch in Italian dance music. This one is tailor made for festivals, so the big question is: will it be hammered all over Tomorrowland this summer? Answer next month.
You can hear the new version in action in our latest mix, starting at 14:40: