The main idea for the Luxxury Edit series was to take overplayed and/or uncool songs and turn them into tracks that I myself would want to DJ. Initially the plan was to do this exclusively using the sounds from the original multi tracks, rather than the typical "throw a new beat and some swooshes on it" kind of re-edit. For Hotel California, the song is so iconic and overplayed that it just felt right and necessary to fuck with it. I had the most of the arrangement together and I liked the vibe, but it was sounding a bit boring as an instrumental. So I started playing with a sequenced synth bass so that it traded off with the bass guitar, and I liked how it started to give it a more futuristic sound. I was dubbing out the Henley vocals but that wasn't working either. So I decided to double down on the future/retro blend and put Don through the vocoder, and it immediately felt right. It was just enough of the original to be recognisable but with a distinctive twist. I love how Greg Wilson originally thought it was an obscure German cover version when he first heard it, that was high praise indeed! Each of these edits has been its own discovery process: they all start with me listening to every single isolated instrument, finding bits that are exciting or surprising - elements buried in the mix, or even outtakes - and then starting to arrange them until the track has just the right blend of familiar and unexpected.