DOWNLOAD: A Place To Bury Strangers - So Far Away (School of Seven Bells Remix)

School of Seven Bells have taken the lead track from the slightly streamlined new incarnation of A Place To Bury Strangers' Onwards To The Wall EP and given it an even sleeker, smoother, dreamier edge.  Pulling the track closer to their own version of shoegaze, blurring out the focus to a matte finish, setting the action a little ways back in the distance and dropping it into a echo chamber, works nicely, the finished piece turning out to be more satisfying than anything from SoSB own new album.  I guess they work best with ballsier source material.  Maybe APTBS could return the favour by detonating a piece off Ghostory




Here's the original to compare and contrast:

STREAM: Gnod - Vatican (DrumCunt Remix)

Hydra psych collective Gnod's epic, monolithic lumbering beast of a track has been given an even bassier rescrub by the deviant production techniques of London's DrumCunt.  Pitched down into the deep dark earth, exhumed and pulverised, Vatican finds itself rerendered as a slow motion drum and bass rumble that verges on the kinds of drag remixes that were pouring out of the walls last year.  This is great.

STREAM: Halls x Sun Glitters - Swan / There

The enigmatic London based electronic producer Halls releases new jams alongside Sun Glitters, and the two remix each other. World spins slightly slower at a more distant angle. Light refracts softly, time locks in a disembodied loop of your own inner experience.  Beyond lush.

DOWNLOAD & VIDEO: Regal Safari - Only, Triumph and Light

Here's one of the most intriguing and exciting propositions to have emerged from my Brighton city in a while: Regal Safari.  One pay through the three tracks on their Bandcamp will have you besieged by contemporary comparisons; the first ones that struck me were Balam Acab (or indeed, one side to the TriAngle sound that isn't shaded the colour of Witch House), Solar Bears, Caribou, Blondes, Worriedaboutsatan - lot's of dreamy and spacey artists who evoke elusive and somewhat intangible landscapes built of disembodied vocals, drifting cosmic ambience; sensuality, euphoria.

They're playing the Green Door Store in October and supporting Gazelle Twin in November. Stalk them on Facebook too.

Here's a brand new synapse frazzling remix of similarly awesome category-evading artist Seams' Hung Markets from their Soundcloud, stream three of their own tracks - Only, Triumph and Light - and/or download them all from Bandcamp.

DOWNLOAD: Malibu Wands - Malibu Hounds

Malibu Wands
Malibu Hounds
DOWNLOAD


Four versions of Malibu Hounds reworked into altered states of consciousness by the God of Blues himself. For all the equatorial heat the repeated 'Malibu' may imply, this starts off with We All Wring Our Hands; a howling icy blast of chill-whipped distortion, a billowing gale of wintery atmosphere that blasts right out the speakers, deep into the marrow of your bones, followed up by 17 minutes of sparse beat spiked blizzard in the Fork It Over mix. The muted patter of beats doesnl;t have to move much under such harsh conditions in order to make its presence felt it's sinisterly effective and locks your attention into it for its full unyielding length. The third reworking is more spacious - Skeptic Sleeper bleeds heat and light in by chopping and glitching about a bit, fluttering clap beats batting gasps of air out of the suffocating chaos. The final 20 minuter Dreamstation begins ever so slowly, a space-crawl out into a glittering cosmos of suspended breath ambience. Clouds of vapour coalesce, as the starship begins its descent, burning and charring through the atmosphere before slowly floating down amidst smoky pallor. One of the heaviest and greatest of Malibu Wands releases to date.

DOWNLOAD: GuMMy†Be▲R! - HAARP (Grey Tongue Remix)

GuMMy†Be▲R! has a new remix up on his Soundcloud from my mix cover design man and other half in Potemkjin Village - Chris Makes - under his remixer guise of Grey Tongue. Witch House meets glitch, glitch eats witch house, dances about with limbs swinging round it's head, meat hanging out it's mouth, looking all wild eyed, twitchy and lunatic. Composes itself briefly then has a roll about kicking up more carnage.

Whut?  This >>>

DOWNLOAD


Stream:



Here's the original version:




Download the excellent Oakland album from Gummy's Bandcamp for free HERE.

Ghost Animal - In Your Room 7''

Psycho-summer doo-wop surf-rock band Ghost Animal release a 7" with two of the best songs from last year's Summertime In Heaven cassette. These tracks are remastered and pressed onto some pretty full-colour shellac in a limited run of 250 from the indefatigably awesome AMDISCS and/or download from Ghost Animal's Bandcamp or AMDISCS' Soundcloud.

The first side features two tracks - Single Man, and In Your Room - both unstoppably hedonistic rushes of blazing youth music; top down beach side cruising and late night after dark whisky yammering rock and roll, all bound up into the same song - one about going out and crushing it onto the girls, the other about being that little bit smoother and silver tongued, yet equally hotloined and irrepressible, if not more so in a simmeringly sensual way.  The flip side holds a lush shimmering sundazed rescrub by Golden Ages and serves as the dreamier cousin to the wide-eyed A-sides.

Gonjasufi - She's Gone (Oneohtrix Point Never Remix)

This is a bit silly but a bit brilliant. Technically slapdash, but emotionally resonant. Only just heard it, but it's worth the post for posterity.

STREAM: Factory Floor - R E A L L O V E (An Optimo Espacio Remix)

Factory Floor.  Need I say more?

Kind of hope they release more than three songs this year, but on the other hand it's that same minimalism that arcs through their music into their entire being that makes them so vital.

The original version of this is like a hyperspeed I Feel Love, a similar combination of beat and bassline to the Moroder pulse electrocuted into urgency.  The remix slows things down, opens it out for a less claustrophobic listen and a less intimidating suggestion as to what Real Love might be.

The original and this remix will be released as a single on 6th April on Blast First Petite.

  Factory Floor - ~ ( R E A L L O V E ) (An Optimo Espacio Remix) by Optimo Music

DOWNLOAD: Gayngs - Affilyated

Gayngs
Affiliyated
DOWNLOAD
BANDCAMP

The album cover is the bastardised offspring of both the winged Doomtree emblem and the Gayngs symbol, slick with fluids, oozing the excesses from this raw sexual commingling.  If you heard the Gayngs album last year chances are it won you over with it's slyly seductive charms eventually, if not instantly.  These remixes (or 'regrinds' as the band calls them) are a different beast to the album. Each instrument and vocal track on Relayted was saved individually with an arbitrary title and offered to each remixer who choose ten tracks which they had to use. They could warp and morph the tracks any way they wanted with the proviso that the beat stick to the sultry 69bpm of the original concept.

The results, as you will hear for yourself soon enough, are quite simply orgasmic. There's a lot more beats and drums popping about the mixes, vocals from two or three different songs layering on to each other, orgiastically, conveniently for the deliberately lurid themes. It all gets pulled off so well that it's making me write in a constant stream of euphemism.

Get some Gayngs regrinding yer ears!!!

DOWNLOAD: Asobi Seksu - Trails (Holy Other Remix)

US shoegaze duo Asobi Seksu release their fourth album Flourescence this week on Polyvinyl. They have a video for the lead single Trails that played out on Pitchfork TV yesterday. Somewhat more interestingly is this remix from German cosmic drag producer Holy Other, whose two tracks, We Over and Yr Love were some of the most entrancing tracks to emerge from some umbral constellation of witchhouse, dubstep and other ephemeral genre sound signifiers. Drifting distinct from the rest in a year that went very far out indeed, he has been enlisted here to add his aura to a band that have always shown a lot of promise but never really delivered quite what I always anticipate them to and the glassy-eyed spin he rolls onto this remix adds just the kind of thing I need from them; less jangle, more star spangle.


Right click, save as:

DOWNLOAD via MOKB: Asobi Seksu – Trails (Holy Other Remix)


There's also a remix from a similarly out-there duo Painted Palms and Deerhoof. The latter, you're already familiar with, the former maybe not so much - they have an album of joyously radiant neon ~wave for free download from their BANDCAMP - worth a whole post in itself.




DOWNLOAD via MOKB: Asobi Seksu – Trails (Painted Palms Remix)
DOWNLOAD via P4K: Asobi Seksu – Trails (Deerhoof Remix)

STREAM: Esben & The Witch - Violet Cries

Brighton's black fairy tale post-rock troubadors Esben & The Witch release their debut record Violet Cries at the end of this month through Matador, and they have made it available for streaming in it's entirety, and allowed everyone to host it on their sites. So nice! (They are, all indeed, very nice people as this will attest).  They are also incredibly talented and have produced a record so tangibly otherworldly, mediaeval and ornate that it seems as if it has been crafted in some darkly romantic tryst between the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christen Andersen. Not easily ascribable to any one genre the songs flit through ideas like shadows through forests, castign shapes upon the bark and your wide eyes, leaving lasting impressions upon the mind with space for you to fill in some interpretations of your own.

There are also two remixes available to download - those shadows having been interpreted thusly by two excellent revisionaries - the worriedaboutsatan one will be on repeat for me for a while, I can feel it:

Marching Song - Snorkel Remix

Skeleton Swoon - worriedaboutsatan Remix

Beautiful stuff.

And yet on they still come, with offerings for your senses: they have served you up this video to Warpath, in anticipation of the physical release,which you can feast your ears and eyes on here:

They're playing the Pavillion Theatre, Brighton on 1st February, with plenty other dates around the UK and Europe  - see HERE for details.

Balaclavas - Vuitton (Twisted Wires Mix)

Atlanta's Balaclavas are an unfuckable force to be reckoned with; their album Roman Holiday is one of 2010's best savage guitar missives that shifts through as many genres as you could possibly handle in one hyperblast fast sitting, burning a sense of macabre noir through the hearts of some kind of noise/punk/hardcore arete that's straddles an elevated understanding of the effectiveness of minimalism. So, layers of polyrhythmic drumming and distored guitar overcoats get blown about into ultra moody backlit shapes over six episodes until the final track where cosmic disco label Italians Do It Better signees Twisted Wires get their hands on Vuitton and send an electric shock through it that jumps it into another dimension altogether -  some pretty intelligent tracklist design to finish the album on it, like one final knockout blow to send you spinning, right round to come back for more.

Negative Pegasus - For Life (pseudo nippon rmx)

Here's two versions of the same song for you, both pretty great in their own ways, and each way being in the opposite direction.  Fittingly for a band called Negative Pegasus, the guitars give great whinney, pulled back hard with the bit in their teeth, rearing up kicking out.  Heroically poised.  They're a two piece from Brighton with four tracks over on their Bandcamp page, each one is a furiously pent up little slice of edgy psych rock that you should check out immediately. Yes it's Christmas Eve, even more reason to treat yourself.  Sling back that morning sherry and imbibe a healthy dose shot of Psychic Energy.

The remix, by the equally heroic and no less elegantly poised Pseudo Nippon is, as he says himself "a little xmas-y, got that tinkle tinkle vibe so get your slippers on and put your rubber duck on your head."

Damn straight.

Here's the before and after shots.

BEFORE:



AFTER:

VIDEO: Jamie Woon - Night Air

This is a pretty slick video for Jamie Woon's Night Air. It's got the feel of night air on your face falling out of the screen at you, then some HD beasties to chill your spine while he croons that strange, slightly alien Michael Jackson / Philly Soul child croon into the sky. Kind of primal yet elegant and refined at the same time. Burial is involved in the production of this track and his skill with manipulating an understating emotional resonance is fully flexed.

Underneath that is a Ramadanman remix of the same track which cools the tempo down even further, droplets of condensation running down the basslines where the drums used to be.




Ramadanman Refix:

DOWNLOAD: These New Puritans - White Chords (Stalker Remix)

Right off the back of the awesome Forest Swords remix of this These New Puritans track comes another from TriAngle affiliate Witch-slasher Stalker; This guy had the best track on the Lindsay Lohan comp that TriAngle put out, it was a chilling, horrific-toned bastard of a piece and this has an element of that in it, laying the disembodied vocal out on a cold slab of nasty fuzz, crushing the air out of it between stony layers of distortion and taunting it with its guttural, dragged doppelganger. The pressure builds until it's killed just like that.

DOWNLOAD

Stream:

 


and take a ride on the unofficial video! (sorry, that was hyper obvious but...)

DOWNLOAD: Holy Other - Yr Love (Magick Mountain Deep Cover Remix)

 Another remix for you, from another love of the year - spectral-soul drag-disco producer Holy Other's Yr Love. The 7" has been on constant rotation (well, the rip has, the actual record has been held up for what seems like forever!) in my house for a couple of months, occupying a space shared with Forest Swords and Balam Acab; a twilight, ethereal world of occult electronics, an erthy aura yet an eye to the sky. This remix by New York producer Magick Mountain brings out the latent Italo-disco of the original that you never quite knew existed and teases the neon void out along a galactic ribbon of gentle trance.

DOWNLOAD: Holy Other - Yr Love (Magick Mountain Deep Cover Remix)

Ariel Pink - Round and Round (Little Loud Remix)

Gonna throw this up here, even though you'll probably already have heard it, there's barely an inch of the web that hasn't been bathed in it's golden hues: It is pretty ace but also I'm posting it here because Mr Little Loud's from Brighton, my town. Reposted from Gorilla vs. Bear, here's the, remix of Ariel Pink's Round and Round from this years upcoming go-to guy for soporiphic club rescrubs.  I almost agree with GvsB when they hold up the original as the track of the year; I seem to have fallen for FM/AM soft rock pretty hard and it's this song that is singularly accountable for stripping me of my defences and priming me for it. This remix softens lines and blurs edges, pulping the shape into a liquified and supple, yet hyped and psyched workout, freshly decked in pastel sweats and pumped perm. Those twinkles on top of that chorus! Yeah, you got me.

DOWNLOAD: Ariel Pink - Round and Round (Little Loud Remix)

VIDEO: White Ring - Roses (FAUXMUSICA BE GEN†LE REM‡X)

Here's a pretty nasty remix of White Ring's epic Roses track by electronic artiste Fauxmusica.  It retains that chilly shudder of the original but scrapes it across the speakers like a slowmotion splatterfest - gory noise obscuring the exact details but the shadow of the original is there inside it giving it that shapely pulse.

Deerhunter – Helicopter (Diplo & Lunice mix)

You've probably already heard this by now, but I've been without pc for days - weeks really, because I've had nothing at home and I've been using only the werk pc for ages, which should explain the recent infrequent blogging.  Anyway. Just got the chance to Soundcloud this, and it's amazingly beautiful. A remix from the only song off Halcyon Digest that I've heard because I've been saving myself to buy the album - I have a very good feeling about this and I wanted to make the moment special.

Sink into this pillow of bliss:

Deerhunter - Helicopter (Diplo & Lunice mix) by maddecent