I Got These Cheeseburgers, Man

Keith, "Mona Lisa's Child" (Alan Braxe and Fred Falke extended mix) - In which Alan Braxe and Fred Falke carry out one of the single finest acts of discolated silk-pursification upon a truly dreadful indie-rock sow's ear since Jacques Lu Cont took a liking to Starsailor's "Four to the Floor". I literally just stumbled over this track today and cannot for the life of me stop playing it; what's more, for once this inescapability only seems partially due to the "OMG dancing to indie music? unpossible!" factor. Admittedly, this (in turn) comes from the fact that Keith are really, really, really ass, arguably my least favorite act out of the whole Manchester scene (if not the British indie rock scene as a whole now that the Test-Icicles are gone, although Duels sure look to be picking that torch up as we speak) - you can rest assured that I would have avoided this mix at all costs had it been by anyone other than Alan Braxe and Fred Falke, arguably the two most reliable producers in the business.

But holy shit, even I couldn't have seen a song this good coming. I tend to like Braxe best when he's working with Falke; the former may have unique and unfettered access to the Hammer of the House Music Gods, but I've noticed that the mixes he crafts with Falke tend to pay out triple in arrangements what they forgo in pure BOSH BOSH BOSH forcefulness. But this is about as song-craft-y as I've ever heard from either one - the remix actually flows like its own pop song, a spiritual successor to the twelve-inch-dance-mixes from the eighties which basically just involved giving you a bigger version of the same song. (This would also help to explain the song's ending, the one moment when it displays anything other than mirrorball grace.) And while I've (obviously) never heard the original, I think I can safely say that the remix packs approximately eighty billion factors of ten more emotive momentum (to say nothing of pure sonic density) - any time you can pay a song off with a single, slightly off-key blissful synth snarl, you're obviously working on a higher plane than the rest of us. Of course, we're talking about Alan Braxe and Fred Falke here, so that might not be a point that's completely necessary to make. (Click here to buy the "Mona Lisa's Child" remix record [which also features a remix from Simian Mobile Disco] from Groove Distribution)

Trentemoeller, "Moan" (vocal version feat. Ane Trolle) - As if 2006 hadn't proven to be a banner year for indietronica already (q.v. So This Is Goodbye, The Eraser, Orchestra of Bubbles, The Looks, and all those other albums strictly built 4 mp3 blogger linx), it's actually nowhere near its end yet - at the very least, we're going to have to at least deal with Trentemoeller's forthcoming debut The Last Resort. There is a certain sense in which I can only call it a disappointment; admittedly, I'm only just starting to familiarize myself with it, and I'd probably find it a lot less exhausting if it weren't matched up against its bonus disc (seriously, PSA for any musicians reading this: make sure you don't trump your actual album with its bonus disc. I mean, didn't anyone learn anything from LCD Soundsystem?), but the undeniable truth is that Tasteful Trentemoeller affords his listeners exponentially fewer chances to be crushed under the freight train of synth explosions and plastic textures than Batshit Crazy Ketamine House Trentemoeller, and the difference leaves us all a little worse off. That's not to say that Those Songs aren't on The Last Resort - I'm posting the vocal version of "Moan", one of only two vocal tracks on the album (and, along with its Castor, shunted off to the aforementioned bonus disc, I suppose "to preserve the sonic integrity of the proper album" or something), largely because he artfully destroys the vocals as thoroughly as in any of the incalculable number of moments populating his remixes for Royksopp or the Knife - just that they're fewer and farther between, and sad as it is to say, these days if I'm going to sit on my ass and meditate on the vastness of an album's sonic space, it better get me either dancing or stroking my chin, and that just ain't this album. Not yet, anyway. If anyone's earned a breaking-in period this year, it's Trentemoeller. (The Last Resort will be available for purchase on October 6th; in the meantime, please visit Trentemoeller's MySpace for more songs.)

Ikara Colt, "May B 1 Day" (Erol Alkan version) - Looking back, it's hard to remember a time when I wasn't utterly bonkers for Erol Alkan, although performing even the most casual search of this site would probably reveal a lack of any pronounced affinity before the increasingly seismic release of the Long Blondes' "Fulwood Babylon" (remember, kids: stoners are boners! Man, could I ever go for a California cheeseburger right about now...). But really, that's pretty much guaranteed to happen whenever you suddenly find yourself face to face with music that's basically the yin to everything you've been trying to put it into context with's yang; my dance music background, again, is in mortifyingly swoopy house music, the kind of crap that Paul Epworth and Soulwax and Justice and everyone "made cool" again by keeping the same dynamics, only swapping out all the actual sonic components for their more machine-cut, hard-rocking counterparts. Well, that ain't Alkan; like I said, it took "Fulwood Babylon" to show me the virtues of his approach to dance music, which isn't so much about taking the listener on a journey as it is about hurling him into a stovetop pot on the verge of boiling over since the song started existing (without ever actually doing so). Of course, now that I've caught the bug, I'd rather cut off appendages one by one than give it up; I'm to the point where I'm regularly spending a good couple of hours beating up S**l*ee* in search of other examples of his work, although when I turn up minor masterpieces like his mix of "May B 1 Day" I'd volunteer to do it all over again. I particularly like the way he uses vocals - a lot of people doing dance mixes of indie songs tend to just treat vocals like another instrument (hell, Alkan does it plenty often himself - q.v. the effects of his efforts to fuck around with Franz Ferdinand's hook on his mix of "Do You Want To"), but Erol will occasionally, and with exceptional results, show vocals a pretty striking degree of respect; here, the vocals might as well be the ones straight off of the album (not that I've ever, y'know, heard the original to compare, mind you), and as the squiggly little acid synth in the back ramps up to match the vocals in intensity, the track takes on the kind of looming, nearly-threatening presence all these Hip Young Gunslinger bands would generally sell entire future generations of their family at wholesale prices in order to achieve just once. Suffice it to say, the man knows how to make a great rock song, maybe even better than he knows how to make a great dance song. And boy does Erol Alkan know how to make a great dance song. (Click here to buy the Basic Instructions EP directly from Fantastic Plastic, the label)