Remixes Revisited

POW! Some time ago we did a piece about remixes, basically saying that when they are done properly, they are an amazing and noble art form.

HOWEVER.

That was then, this is now.

In remix world, time moves way faster than 45rpm, meaning that one must keep their ear firmly pressed to the ground in order to keep up with the best rubs, dubs and edits.

Now, we haven’t had our ears anywhere near the ground since last Thursday night, which, quite frankly, is an experience we’re not looking to repeat. So it’s a good job we’ve got you lot listening out for us, else we’d be even more pointless and behind-the-times.

Here is the best of the stuff you’ve been bothering us with on the email / MySpace.

MIA - Bird Flu (Crash Berlin Remix)
Original sounds like: Being chased through a market in the Philippines while trying to get your hands on some illicit wildfowl for use in soups.
Remix sounds like: Playing Hip Hopscotch with the Children of Hell while pools of molten lava flow around you and the Devil taps his feet approvingly and twats about on a guitar. There’s clearly a tribal sacrifice involved after the three minute mark, too.

Larrikin Love - Downing Street Kindling (Statik Refix)
Original sounds like: Fey indie boy complaining about England being a bit rubbish, over a polite skiffle ‘n’ fiddle backing.
Remix sounds like: Fey indie boy being thrown down the stairs at a grime night, over a lost reggae punk record from 1976. Also sounds like the kind of music Babyshambles would hope to make were they not on so much smack.

Klaxons - Gravity’s Rainbow (Soulwax Remix)
Original sounds like: Dirty scuzz rock being fired into space from a million tiny canons, burning up in the atmosphere and falling back down to earth as glitter.
Remix sounds like: Basically everything that’s good about cathedral-sized slow-builders that start off with pots and pans being banged and end up filling your head with nothing but PURE WHITE NOISE. Sounds a bit like Candi Staton near the end as well.

Know any more? Tell us! x

Obscurer with Paul Smith!

He's back!

Hi fans!

I bet you’re glad to see me back (and relieved!) but in reality there was never any chance of me giving up this column so easily. I just found that review so hurtful that I felt it appropriate to withdraw from public life for a while. I’ve been living in Gateshead, on that bridge where all the naked people were. To be honest it’s been fucking freezing, so I’m glad to be back.

Anyway, today’s old record is ‘You Keep Me Hanging On’ by Bonnie and Shelia. The track is a horns ‘n’ organs funk classic that encapsulates what it feels like to be in love, but from a slightly stalker-ish perspective. It is not really made clear whether the object of Bonnie and Sheila’s desire is an amazing bastard who never calls, or a complete stranger that the two of them have seen somewhere, possibly in a bar, or on a ‘sidewalk’, and fallen in love with.

It reminds me of the time I was kept hanging on, by BT, who had me at a payphone for 40 minutes and still weren’t able to solve my problem. I wanted to get my phone connected so I could get broadband in my flat, but the guy was like, “you’ve got to pay £150”, or something, and I’m like, “I doubt it mate, not just to flick a switch at the exchange” and he’s going, “can you hold on for a moment”, while he goes off to check something, so I’m sat there listening to some random Pavarotti (rest in peace by the way) track, which was quite good but not helping me get broadband, and then the guy comes back with, “I’ve checked and the price I’ve given you is the correct one”, and I say, “well can you check again, is there anyone you can speak to, because I’m not paying that - not just to have somebody switch my phone line on”, and he goes off again, and it went on like that for about 40 minutes I was VERY UNHAPPY.

See you next time kids.

Paul
x

Lock up ALL your daughters...

A LIVE REVIEW
JOON, Sept 8, Wagon & Horses, Newhey

You wouldn’t think it was possible to squeeze a stadium into a small provincial boozer, and you’d be right. That would be stupid. It would involve far too much planning, and possibly a few changes to the laws of physics. However, what is possible, as proved ably here by JOON, is that you can transport the atmosphere, tunes, intensity and VOLUME of a stadium show into a pub so tiny, they serve the Coke out of lukewarm bottles.

JOON, for the uninitiated, are the “idiosyncratic, smile-inducing party of a band” we first reviewed back in March. Part of the New Wave Of Old Rock (which probably doesn’t exist but, hey, sounds snappy), they’ve liberated 80s synth rock, prising it from the near-dead hands of balding men in abysmal shirts, tearing it up and rebuilding it in their own image.

They do as much tonight; storming through a set which veers effortlessly between note-perfect covers of genre standards and the band’s own compositions. Particularly pleasing are rabble-rousing renditions of A-Ha’s ‘Take On Me’ (so loud they probably heard it in Norway) and JOON’s own towering, power-rock behemoth ‘Walk Like You Don’t Care’ (a tune which causes giddiness in ourselves not seen since we last OD’d on Sunny Delight).

It’s testament to their skill as musicians, not only as showmen, that all the songs the band play tonight sit so comfortably together, and even their appropriately-gargantuan set length (a Springsteen-pushing two hours) feels like it breezes by. In a word, immense.

Hooray for Calvin Harris

Producer Calvin Harris has been yapping on all summer to anyone who’ll listen about how he’s “not really a popstar” and that he’s “uncomfortable with being marketed like one”.

Now, no one is doubting Producer Calvin Harris’ artistic intentions and fine production skills, but since literally anyone with ears and/or eyes can see (from a mile off) that Producer Calvin Harris is currently the best solo popstar Britain has to offer, we thought we’d get our resident Calvin fan to pen a list of reasons reminding everyone why this is the case.

So, without further ado…

Five Reasons Why Calvin Harris Is An Amazing Popstar


1. Firstly… this:


This picture is just one of many of Calvin that I love. I found it on his MySpace. Even better are the little animated ones he does, which are not only funny and cute but also display a level of effort far beyond the average producer, who usually just puts some rubbishy old artwork up.

POPSTAR.

2. Sense of humour. Calvin has MySpace bulletin titles like ‘Did you hear Beyoncé’s a lesbian?’. How many other producers do stuff like that? Not the fucking Chemical Brothers that’s for sure.

POPSTAR.

3. Height. Not strictly related to his popstarness, but the fact that Calvin is a whopping 6’5” makes it easier for small people like myself to see him at his gigs. I also appreciate the fact that he stands at the front of the stage, unlike most producers who hide behind great banks of machinery. Thank you Calvin.

POPSTAR.

4. While we’re on a gigging ‘tip’, can I just point out that Mr. Harris is the only person I’ve seen display the enthusiasm of a hyperactive poodle on acid, albeit one that’s very attractive and wearing a well-made and imaginatively-printed hoodie, for an entire set?

POPSTAR.

5. Basically, Calvin Harris is an amazing popstar because of his style, his sense of humour, his colourfulness and his desire to be to laptops what Monster out of the Muppets is to drum kits (you have to see him live to appreciate this point). Being a popstar is about having personality, brilliant clothes and huge sunglasses - all three of which Calvin has loads of.

POPSTAR.

And the number one reason why I think Calvin Harris is brilliant is that he has love for me, because I was born in the 80s (sigh).

Thank you.

(Words by Cherry T)

Not had one of these for a while...

Tune Of The Week, The
Modernaire - Scalpel

Just when you thought things couldn’t get much better, Modernaire return with ‘Scalpel’, a tune that takes things the band are renowned for - irresistible hooks, worryingly ‘noire’ lyrics - and combines them, brilliantly, with a monstrous slab of squelchy Gallic electro-house.

The result is a towering accomplishment, a fierce-sounding booty shaker that sounds like Vitalic finding the funk while experimenting with eyeliner and dark clothing. The cut ‘n’ paste lyrics are as brilliant as ever, and earn whoever penned them bonus points for not only coining the phrase “sweet like Calpol” but also managing to rhyme it successfully with the title.

5/5

Read more about Modernaire.
Modernaire on MySpace.

Unexpected Turner-ound

For the record, 'Brianstorm' by the Arctic Monkeys is actually brilliant, and we never said otherwise. 'Teddy Picker' is quite good too.

Okay.

x

Couldn't have given much less...

Gimme gimme
Pro Plus
Gimme gimme
BLACK COFFEE

Gimme gimme the sense to realise that looking confused and/or sozzled on stage is quite frankly no way to make my comeback as the world’s greatest pop star.

(Video deleted because MTV are boring cunts who don't believe in free publicity).

Sort it out, Spears.

It's pretty good, actually.

Notes on Britney’s new one.

:: It is called ‘Gimme More’.
:: It’s quite moody and dark-sounding but not boring.
:: Repeat, it is NOT BORING. This is brilliant news.
:: It is more ‘Weird Britney’ than ‘Pop Britney’.
:: That’s ‘Weird Britney’ in a Slave 4 U sort of way, not a going-around-shouting-and-hitting-cars-with-umbrellas-and-generally-being-a-bit-mental sort of way.
:: Around the three minute mark a very soulful man tries to sing while sitting on an electric cooker that is switched on. (This is definitely true).
:: Either that or he’s stood in one of those industrial walk-in freezers.
:: You can expects literally dozens of ‘hilarious’ YouTube parodies where the word ‘more’ in the chorus is replaced by RANDOM AND ZANY things like apples and badgers and lots of things that students find funny.
:: And ‘booze’, obviously. Someone will do a version of this song where Britney repeatedly and hilariously demands more beer.
:: Towards the end there’s a bit where it all sort of stops and someone says “bet you didn’t see this coming” and do you know what? He is right.

:: Finally - and most importantly - it opens with the soon-to-be-immortal line, “It’s Britney, bitch”, after which she says “I see you… I just wanna dance with you” and does some sort of mad cackle.

LITERALLY AMAZING.