IT'S the greatest rock n roll swindle the ubiquity of the remix, a by product of dance culture blurs the boundaries between commerce and music. A case in hand is the £11.99 you'll have to pay for Underworld's single, Born Slippy, and there's a lot of full album CDs out there which cost less. The explanation is that it's "loads of re mixes". So what? Maybe the DJ Sad Bastard mix is a particularly bangin' affair, but when some singles boast five tracks on the B side, all of them the same song re twiddled, there's something rotten in the state of record companydom.
Remixes done well can almost become new songs, when the component parts are stripped down/de constructed and re assembled/re edited in a radically different order. Too often though, it's just a push of the generic "drum n bass" or "trance" button and the resultant mess is passed off as an "essential mix".
A problem Wittgenstein never had was whether a "re mix" album qualifies as a "new" album, as is the case with Bjork's (and, for the last time, her name rhymes with work, not dork) latest album, Telegram. What Ms Goddomonsteir has done here is take her very fab Post album, round up an eclectic bunch of remixers to re work it, and then push it out into the shops. Bjork being Bjork, however, the net result is not without its merits. Like Goldie, Tricky and Massive Attack, the Icelandic one is a member of the "post rock" crowd and is always capable of pushing the envelope when she needs to.
Previously she had proved herself to be very re mix friendly. Her record label, One Little Indian, allowed her to set up her own indie, which (Bjork being Bjork) remains unnamed and in the past while she has released a number of limited 12 inch singles, all of them re workings of previous efforts: Possibly Maybe (the Talvin Singh Mix), Possible Maybe (the LFO Mix) and Big Time Sensuality (the Plaid Mix).
There are some fillers and some genuinely good stuff on Telegram: the Brodsky Quartet do some great stuff with Hyperballad, Graham Massey (of 808 State) does similar with Army Of Me while Bjork herself and percussionist Evelyn Glennie do wonders with My Spine. But a better recommendation might be (ironically) the up coming re release of the Sugarcubes albums.
TALKING of re mixes, Noel Gallagher has done just that to one of Beck's tracks (imagine that). Beck plays the SFX next Thursday night ... Recorded while Stan Erraught was still in the band, The Sewing Room's second album, Sympathy For The Dishevelled goes out on the Dead Elvis - label early next year. Pre release tapes of the work confirm it as their best ever work, and if any major labels out there know anything about music, they should do something with it ... Too often this country serves as a dumping ground for has beens and never will be's, but one of the better decisions we've ever made is to embrace David Gray, whose career was more or less kick started by the heads at No Disco. A somewhat belated tour for the Sell Sell Sell album sees him play the Ambassador Cinema/ Theatre next Wednesday and Thursday ... And one of the best home produced singer/songwriters around, Sean Millar, goes out on a short Irish tour next week starting at The Duke of York in Belfast tomorrow night, going on to The Harp Tavern in Sligo on the 12th and The Lobby, Cork, on the 13th. Expect plenty from the wonderful Bitter Lie album and tons of new stuff too ... If you're up for a Punk Rock Christmas Bingo and also want to see Cheapskate, Stomach, Bambi and Black Belt Jones live, get along to The Attic tomorrow night for the Hope Promotions benefit for St Vincent De Paul. They don't want your money, but bring along non perishable food (in case you're a bit thick, that means stuff in - cans, basically) to the value of £2 - or more if you want.
