"Hard Times" finds Patrick Wolf battle-hardened. Industrial leather-boy Alec Empire was roped in to lend new album The Bachelor teeth and filth and while he's succeeded in doing that in his role as producer, as remixer he really goes to town: arming the track with brain-rattling beats and malevolent electronic whirs, swoops and clanks. What shouldn't fit here? What would be most alien, amidst the strings, dark mechanical sounds and Patrick's thesp-baiting wailings? G-funk. G-funk bomp underpins this, incredibly, and what's more it works. Confusion is Patrick Wolf's game - the English youth's lyrical repertoire is shot through with sexual and existential angst, but here that confusion is transferred to the music and so the singer in the middle of it all sounds relatively bold, bolstered, victorious. Good job, Alec!
Sounds Like: Pendulum, Outkast, dying aeroplanes
Patrick Wolf - Hard Times (Alec Empire Remix)
Previously:
Alec Empire - If You Live or Die
Patrick Wolf's RCRD LBL Page
The rapturously received Merriweather Post Pavilion was rapturously received by so many for so many reasons, but integral to its skewiff magick was a refusal of easy genre: the record seemed to mark the point where Animal Collective could just be Animal Collective and no-one had the balls to dare kick against their weirdness. It was a freedom handy for remixers, as Domino displayed to a drooling world as they called in hyperstepper Zomby, soca-dub king L.D. and neo-soul ascendant Dam-Funk to refit "Summertime Clothes" for single release. Dam-Funk drools all over this, gleeful squiggles of spumy funk synth flaring up like wet confetti, the thing underpinned by militant snare and gurgling bass. End result: more reasons to love, more reasons for rapture.
Sounds Like: Passion Pit, Phaseone, Patrick Adams
Animal Collective - Summertime Clothes (Dam-Funk Remix)
Animal Collective's RCRD LBL Page
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The original mix of "Odyle" - available to hear at Heloise & The Savoir Faire's MySpace page - is confusing enough; a bawdy concoction of drunken, arpeggiated disco, big mama punk vox akin to Beth Ditto's and the usual, heady, electro rush. When that James Pants gets ahold of it though - he of super-fresh jive styles and Stones Throw approve - the whole thing laxes out, finds a different space and gets its groove on; Pants fixing it up with isolated shimmers of synth and one of his trademark slacker G-Funk basslines. It's a come on Heloise responds to, her throat dropping its punkish affectations in favour of more sultry, slowly ecstatic 90s house tones. More sexy turkey profiled on Heloise & The Savoir Faire's debut LP Trash, Rats and Microphones available now through Elijah Wood's Simian Records.
Sounds Like: Neptunes, Baby D, Hall & Oates
Heloise & The Savoir Faire - Odyle (James Pants Remix)
Previously:
James Pants - Ka$h (Trizzy & XXXchange Remix)
James Pants - Dragonslayer
James Pants - We're Through
Howard Johnson - Say You Wanna (Pants Re-Edit)
Heloise & The Savoir Faire's RCRD LBL Page
