The Big One

Hot Chip, "Colours" (DFA remix) - I'm going to warn you right up front: I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to end up having said about this song. In a way, that's probably a good thing; it's been going around the internet for a week or so now, and therefore it's not unreasonable to assume that everything original about it has long since been said, and since God only knows that the only thing worse than having nothing to say about a song you love is having nothing original to say about a song you love, it's probably best to cut that bait right off the bait.

And make no mistake about it - I fucking love this remix. Don't get me wrong - Hot Chip's original is one of my very favorite songs on The Warning, but I haven't heard a remix school the original so thoroughly since Jacques Lu Cont got his hands on Starsailor's "Four to the Floor". It helps that this is probably the most un-DFA remix the imprint's ever put out; they have, after all, done both "languid" and "stately" before, but this is the first time I've ever heard them go for "grooveless", and they go for it with all the gusto of a fourteen-year-old rounding second base for the first time. I mean, even when the beat takes off into the stratosphere towards the end, there's no smoothness or ease to it - within the context of the song, it's merely as inevitable a musical event as Jack Black and the kids rocking the fuck out at the end of School of Rock (er, spoiler). In other words, it's not a song that exists to work itself out - in fact, I'd go so far as to say that it's as exhausted a song as I've ever heard. The fact that it came from the same team that birthed That Jon Spencer Blues Explosion Remix is just icing on the cake, I guess.

Or rather, that's what it would be in any year other than 2006. We are, after all, living in the year of Silent Shout and The Eraser and So This Is Goodbye and, well, The Warning - in other words, a pretty unimpeachable year as far as sui generis electronic pop music (or as I like to think of it, Yacht Techno) goes. The idea of the DFA, ferchrissakes, beating everyone's career year, at least on a singles basis - and make no mistake, after the "Colours" remix, it's hard to believe that there are summits of icy techno grandeur worth scaling worth scaling - would seem to be the equivalent of discovering that the year's best Country & Western song was penned by Ice Cube* - completely improbable until you hear it and go "Oh, well of course". Music is, in the end, remarkably fluid; good music is always less a matter of who the musician is than what they can do, which would seem like a pretty obvious point until you remember that most people can make a longer list of costumes Gnarles Barkley wear onstage than of songs that they, y'know, sing. And in the case of the DFA, it's almost obvious in retrospect that they'd be able to reach heights like these - after all, has anything colored the DFA's aesthetic quite so much as the idea that they're not listening to what anyone else has to say about anything? And is there a way one could demonstrate imperviousness to the ideas and principles of others than by doing exactly what they're doing?

Well, okay, that's a slight misinterpretation; for this one track only, the DFA are doing exactly what everyone else is doing, only without any of the violence that characterizes so many of its peers. The "Colours" remix is inarguably the most resistance-free track they've put out since the Days of Mars EP; one flies through the song the way you used to fly through space in Galaga. That's not to say that there aren't edges, of course (especially if you've got some ridiculous resistance to stuff like the Flying Picketts' cover of "Only You") but compared to the brutal textures of "One Hit" or the captured decay of "The Eraser", it's practically a retard-proofed mansion, an eight-minute stroll around a foam-covered, horizonless island. The central irony, of course - the one that makes the song so great - is that the "Colours" remix takes the song to levels of fucked-uppedness that neither the original (which does take a decided turn) nor any of its more musically violent contemporaries ever even approach; by making the song gigantic and expansive, they've somehow found a way to flatten out all the oblique angles in which the Hot Chip original revels - the insistent, popping Krautrock beat, the British-concept-of-tropical synths, even the dignity in the muted contrast between the song's intro and its actual meat - without letting it get boring. I mean, fundamentally everything that I just listed is in the DFA remix - it's just in there in its most fucked-up Williamsburghian nightmare form. Come to think of it, maybe that's what makes it such a DFA song - after all, what could be more nightmarish to a yeoman of taste than something that fails to put up even a shred of resistance against anyone who'd take it on its own terms? (The DFA remix is currently only available on promo; in the meantime, click here to order the CDS featuring a remix by Green Pea-ness faves Alan Braxe and Fred Falke from Rough Trade. Oh, and another big ol' thanks to BadmintonStamps for turning me onto the remix in the first place)

* Please note that no such song actually exists.

Vicarious Bliss, "Theme From Vicarious Bliss" (Lifelike Goes To Disco remix) - I'd be lying if I said that this remix by Lifelike was my favorite thing he'd ever been associated with, although considering that we're talking about the guy who teamed up with Kris Menace to unleash the dancefloor Cthullu called "Discopolis", inarguably the greatest track never actually recorded by Daft Punk (until Human After All came out and revealed that all along them cray-zee robots were just trying to make "La Rock 01"), you're still pretty well into the black. Besides, the biggest difference between "Discopolis" and the Vicarious Bliss remix is simply that the former gets enough time to actually accomplish itself - I mean, at nine and a half minutes, there better not be a door in "Discopolis" that's gone un-knocked-upon, but even taking that into account, the Vicarious Bliss remix does kinda feel like a French Touch lab project, all the force the genre can manage without any of the genre's knowing little idiosyncrasies that give its best songs their staying power. Again, I want to make it clear that this simply means that the "Theme From Vicarious Bliss" remix is merely better than %98 of all house music in the world today; at this point, Lifelike is arguably better than Alan fucking Braxe when it comes to celebrating the density of disco, and this remix is genuinely one of his finer moments in that regard, five solid minutes of bass-anvils plummeting from the sky, ripping through the surface tension formed by the alchemy of that insistent pluck and that spiraling synth line like rocks thrown into a lake. It's just that - and I fully realize that I'm about to level a very, very stupid criticism against an otherwise fine song - you can still hear the craftsmanship at work, and if there's one consistent thing about the best French Touch stuff, it's that it all practically sounds found in the street as-is; this is, after all, why there might not be a better way to make a roomful of people do a double-take than to simply slip George Duke's "I Love You More" into a party playlist. It's not even that it's been crafted poorly - it's just that ideally, this stuff shouldn't sound crafted at all. Lord knows "Discopolis" didn't. (Click here to buy a used copy of the "Theme from Vicarious Bliss" single, which includes a remix from Justice, from a GEMM merchant.)

Oh, what the hell - it's been a slow week. Have "Discopolis" too. Taste the happy, Michael. (Click here to buy a used copy of the "Discopolis" single from a GEMM merchant)

Jim Reid, "Dead End Kids" - Out of all the bands that have ever existed, the Jesus and Mary Chain are right up there with the Velvet Underground and the Fall on the big list of bands I admire passionately up until the instant I start listening to their music. It's been a pleasant surprise, then, to discover Jim Reid the solo artist; freed from the loathesome burden of channelling his hostility into musical form, he's actually proven himself to be quite good at coming up with music as enjoyable to listen to as it is to tell other people about. I mean, I'm sure there's plenty of knowing comments to be made about the effect of the drum machine (!) used in this track or the gleeful effortlessness imbuing all the fucks peppering "Dead End Kids"...but why? Why not drink deeply from the cacophonic climax? Why not soak up the sly way he pulls the rug out of the song for a half-bar per verse? Why not practice sighing "fuck" until you can approximate his exhausted spitefulness? Hell, why not just go listen to Psychocandy again and leave the actual capital-f Fun music to the kids? (Click here to buy the "Dead End Kids" single from Rough Trade)