Don’t really like remix albums, think they often fall prey to DJ egos slipping into that generically 'party album' pool, full of boring beats and sequenced bleep flips … but this collection is how I always imagined a remix album to be…a collection that breathes new directions and atmospheres from the original… and when the original is as stark as Doomed Bird’s Fedicia Exine I’m doubly amazed that so many people have managed to open so many new doorways from the raw goods … hats off to all included… these six tracks not only take an imaginative leap from the original but could be argued, stand out as tracks in their own right… the majority taking a rich vein of ambience and chord drone…with a few taking the dancey equation and running with it… either into filmic spreads or pure floor filling goodness…
For the first track things are stretched in a Troum styled homage… the raw ingredients becoming a chord impregnated distillation thrown to some Dali-esque perspective, a bassy broth expanding and contracting in space…
The second, penned by Rothko’s Mark Beazley keeps the original but introduces bassy stepping stones between the gaps before meandering off on twilight chords… Plenty of rich depth-charge riffage that gave me an irresistible urge to dig out my old Rothko records…like I need any excuses!
Position Normal opt for a gaseous squeeze…with watery tears… bicycle wheels with traffic noise on wet concrete… harp flutterings and glacial glide, pleasantly pastoral…
The next ticks my boxes completely as the original vox melts away on harmonium drone… … sort of sounds like it’s dwelling in a Lustmordal universe… the sound taking all sorts of interesting directions …modular jewels descending into some lute… milk bottles full of mechanical moths…garnished in tasty reverb Dettol… Mono piano fingers wrapping themselves around plodding drum patterns, like Eno circa mid to late 80’s… Fairy wing textures... and those beautiful modulated zithers… what’s not to love... I’ve been seeing clouds shaped like Klaus Schulze ever since…
Zoon van snooK edit is a complete dancey make-over…a Lemon Jelly mix of Spanish guitar and splatters of pilfered voice over hand claps… a funky mud bath of a track that leads to the chill-out curves and semi-realism of the last track…a junky’s ghosting of the original by Robert Logan … those Casio smears recalling Alan Wilder's side project Recoil all filmic synth-phonics and sampler combos dealing out pure atmospheric craftsmanship.
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