In praise of... Remixes

Remixes, depending on your point of view, are either a complete waste of time, or a brilliant way of giving old and/or rubbish songs a new lease of life.

We’re not talking about cash-in-hand, rentabeat remixes here: where faceless producers try to sell their awful attempts at dance music by slapping random snippets of someone else’s vocal over the top - the musical equivalent of offering to paint someone’s portrait, only to then stick bits of their photo on top of a painting you’ve already done. We’re referring to the type of remix that takes elements of the original and mercilessly plays around with them, distorting, twisting and generally fucking about with things until a whole new interpretation of the song becomes apparent.

This is closer in spirit to a director re-shooting someone else’s film, but with their own vision, than the cheap ‘cash-for-bpm' view of remixes that some people hold.

Take the CSS remix of the latest Cribs single, for example. A fairly average indie tune that at best could hope to inspire limited outbreaks of foot-shuffling becomes a thrusting, colourful dancefloor banger, just because some people from Brazil thought it would sound better that way. How did CSS pull it off? Not by ripping the original to pieces and sewing it back together with Generic Trance thread, but by tweaking the original so delicately that it sounds like it always did - except completely different.

A similar ethos is employed by Mr. Oizo, on his remix of Rage Against The Machine’s ‘Killing In The Name’. Here, the Gallic Flat Eric-botherer has rejuvenated one of the most tired songs of all time, literally by ‘re-producing’ the original. It follows exactly the same structure: all the same riffs are in place, the iconic bass-and-tin-pot intro intact, yet Oizo has applied a sort of punk, fuck-you tweak to the track, adding artificial vocals and screeching guitar stabs left right and, indeed, centre. The seditious, glitchy retake ends in appropriate fashion, skipping to halt like a broken CD. The overall result being that ’Killing In The Name’ sounds more alive, more vital, and more likely to elicit a ’WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?’ reaction than at any point during the past 14 years.

More intrusive to structure, but no less playful, are To My Boy’s tamperings with Klaxons’ track ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’. Here, the quirky Scouse duo rip steaming chunks out of the original and weld them back together so furiously you’d think they were reclaiming it as their own lost demo. The tune is given a gigantic, menacing electro tune-up, so that “I’ll always be there for you, my future love” ends up sounding more like an ominous threat than a declaration of devotion, but crucially, the joyful rave-ish spirit of the original remains intact.

This is in contrast to Erol Alkan’s take on ‘Golden Skans’: the Trash man simply attached a vocal sample and some token riffery to a sparse electro track that probably took him all of five minutes to knock out in exchange for his Klaxons dollar.

Ultimately, remixes needn’t necessarily stick to the original’s template in order to remain worthwhile. It is still possible to ditch wholesale chunks and replace them with your own musical witterings and not become part of the ‘Max Von Rustpumper’s Rustpumper Dub’ crowd. Look at Modernaire’s remix of The Holloways’ ‘Generator’. This is basically more of a cover version than a remix, replacing forced north London jauntiness with a cerebral, layered and, at times, sinister-sounding take that is nonetheless surprisingly danceable.

Also closer to a cover than a remix is Metronomy’s stunning re-working of Kate Nash’s ‘Foundations’. Currently kicking the fuck out of clued-up clubland, the mix takes Nash’s already-iconic vocal and teams it with lurching electro basslines, synths and an inspired falsetto backing to create a fitting accompaniment to the feelgood/bad hit of the summer. The dreamy “ooooooh” vocal during the bridge is truly brain-bending, and has already been held responsible for the melted hearts, heads and legs recently suffered by several hundred overexuberant club kids. Much like the best remixes usually are.