TF Archives

Cabin Crew - Falling Stars

Author: Stuart Christmas
Thursday, July 7, 2005
With Star2Fall riding high, Ben Garden and Rob Kittler are enjoying success as Cabin Crew. Stuart Christmas talks to Rob Kittler from the duo.

The recent success of re-hashed '80s sampled vocal stabs has paved the way for an influx of artists to come to the fold.

For producer/engineer Ben Garden and dj/producer Rob Kittler, forming Cabin Crew is evolutionary.

The correlation between the duo and house music is ongoing.

Dj Kittler can be found plying his trade in interstate clubs in Sydney and Canberra. He's played alongside dj Falcon, Mark Knight and Moulton man, Jay-J to name but a few.

Garden has taken a lesser known route to fulfil his ambitions. Apart from working with Kittler, he has been producing and composing for TV shows in Sydney for the past 6 years.

Garden, along with his sibling brother, is also working on an album of pop infused '80s electronica.

Sampling a brief vocal stab of Boy Meets Girl's original record Waiting For a Star to Fall, Cabin Crew's arrival at the nation's clubs has been assured.

Thanks to the commercially friendly hit Star 2 Fall, Cabin Crew's presence in clubs and on the airwaves has been as large as it's been popular.

Described as commercial house with huge cross-over appeal (think Eric Prydz's reworking of Call on Me and Star 2 Fall), vocal house and even techno, Cabin Crew's rendition is 100% Australian made.

The record's longevity has proven to be steadfastly rich.

The record started life in 2003 and, according to Kittler, was Garden's concept.

"He just thought of the sample and started to play with it. We did the final mix of it in September '03, and that's pretty much the result of what people are hearing now."

Difficulty in obtaining clearances and samples are part of the norm when venturing back in time and using other artist's work, but Kittler concedes that although they experienced more difficulty than most, they did receive a little good fortune.

The story behind Star 2 Fall is that Cabin Crew and UK artists Sunset Strippers both sampled the original song at the same time, despite the fact that vast distance and copious countries which stand between the two nations.
It looked like their anthem in waiting was doomed to gather dust mites as Sunset Strippers were granted the rights to use the original Boy Meets Girl song, rendering Garden and Kittler's version obsolete.

Kittler was shocked by the strange occurrence of events.

"After sitting on the track for a while we'd been trying to get our version cleared since May '04, then Sunset's version popped up. We had the green light given to us by the publishing company but we never heard back from Sony, who happened to own the master."

After a period of "freaking out" after Sunset Strippers had managed to clear the sample, they were forced to recreate the original sample.

But, music being the strange and often fickle business that it is, things swung dramatically in Cabin Crew's favour when out of the blue, Boy Meets Girl re-recorded the vocal for Cabin Crew, thus making it viable and paving the way for Star 2 Fall to once again gain precedence.

Kittler acknowledges that from a musical perspective having the original vocal added quite a lot of substance in musical terms.

Despite the success of the record he remains surprised by the amount of attention directed at it.

"It's a pleasant surprise," he enthuses.

"It's a nice feeling to know that people are going out there and actually buying it."

Modestly, Kittler says that it's probably down to coincidence that he, Garden, and UK outfit Sunset Strippers conceived the record at the same time.

Regardless of the amalgamation of good fortune and bad, their love of sound can be traced back to an unlikely source: Canberra.

During their high school years they would experiment with synths and computers during their lunch breaks.

Both Kittler and Garden have credible music history. Garden had learnt the piano since 6 and Kit
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