Musical Redux
Music is a medium that, foremost, heralds intimacy. Through song, the prospective visionary transmutes a dearth of lived experience into waveform–their livelihood tendered freely for the consumption of a stranger. Despite the distance, we establish proxemics within the orbit of the creator, who themselves may work with a range of trustees to realise their unimpeded vision. Their contributions do not make the work any less singular, however, and once it sees release into the world, there is no joy quite like that of the audioscribe and audiophile revelling in a sonic spark kindled to fruition. The music may be accepted or rejected by its contemporaries, but it is nonetheless rendered canon, embedded undeniably within the discography of its overseer. So, what happens when others step in after the fact, infusing their own idiosyncratic instincts, inventing new, accredited lore via the art of the remix?
The cover of Kelela’s RAVE:N, The Remixes. Kelela is perhaps the best example of an artist who champions the remix, overseeing this rave-tinged opus. Rather than an afterthought, it is very much a companion piece to 2023’s Raven, reborn. Image via Spotify, courtesy of Warp Records. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
Well, by nomenclature, the remix chops, bends and distorts, carving a new flow state and trajectory for the life of a song. It takes a recognisable quotient of the original and applies a deconstructive approach, going back in to reform what was once a tight-wound, deliberate arrangement into a distinctive assemblage of parts. To the discerning listener, enjoyment of the resultant expression is propelled by a healthy dose of familiarity, yes, but ultimately shrouded in ambiguity, remaining sonically nebulous in flair and function until one hits play.
For, seldom realized by the beholder, the remix artist proceeds to imbue the authorized piece with renewed intent and meaning, reshaping it in due course according to their own will, whims and expertise. At a minimum, this may take the guise of tacking on an extra verse to accrue further streams, capitalising on a single’s peak. Or, more lovingly, the revision is sown through rewritten lyrics, toplining a wholly alien beat–or none whatsoever. In this aural world, pop can become trance, and trance can become hardcore, which itself may be undone via an ambient rework. The possibilities are endless, and yet the essence remains; from sprouted seed to benign budding growth, a mutual core is maintained across visionaries. In exactitude, the replicant work–demonstrably more than a facsimile, yet fundamentally something other than its predecessor–while reliant on what came before, thus appears as insistent on doing away with it: a precarious balancing act that can thrust the reception of its re-envisionment into fraught ‘make-or-break/hit-or-miss’ territory.
This is because the redux will inevitably draw (albeit much-warranted) comparisons to its mother grooves, proving delicate terrain for any who seek to extend or erode the works of another in pursuit of their own creative vitality to skirt. Tampering with a perhaps beloved tune is its necessary condition–the meta reasoning for its existence in the first place–and so it lives or dies by the success with which it pulls ‘something’ off. That ‘something’, however, is hard to quantify, experiential, and measured on a case-by-case metric, given that there are already many structural and semantic working parts involved as is in the exchange between artistic purpose, listener appreciation, and their intermediary of song.
Chris Cunningham’s posthumanist rendition of Björk’s ‘All is Full of Love.’ The music video version adds in a lustrous, syncopated beat, very much contingent on the contrast against album Homogenic’s version. There, the vocals dominate with intent as the record’s closing track, imbuing a sense of finality. Here, we enter a trip-hop domain of Björk’s doing, ever eager for adaptation.
Some may choose to indulge in the reconstruction without ever having formed a kinship or oneness with the prior piece, while to others, it blasphemes in the name of the OG, felt as ‘authentic’. Within this camp, the rework bends bloated by thankless association, its flourishing touches deemed unnecessary, or else its encapsulation provokes too much disarray in the ears of the already contented fan, running in staunch defiance of what gave the initial its value or classic status. To others, cacophony is rendered beauty, the remix a superior distillation of the song, making the original track pale in contrast, seeming precursory or demo-like next to the latter version’s expansive, iterated form. In further instances, the remix may even stand as its own beast, so distinctly far removed that its DNA (the sample) is barely traceable in the fold of the file’s compression. Overall, it becomes self-evident then that establishing criteria for remix acclaim presents a futile exercise; responses are highly intersubjective and therefore implausible to standardise.
These all represent matters of subjective taste on an individual level, but even in a broader sense, it remains unclear whether the remix model fares better for the industry than its antecedents when considering how such tastes overlap to culminate in niche, localized or seemingly universal traction. This is because nowadays it can seem like a cash-grab to enlist another artist–one who may be more popular or otherwise on the rise–to be readily packaged along with a single or full-bodied album as a bonus or deluxe track in a last-ditch effort to top Billboard and incentivise sales. In tactical deployment, label meddling can cloud the longevity and relevance of the remix, with the artist perceived as a trophy or diminished if made salient to this notion. It leaves the remix feeling like scrap or excess (less a gift from the artist, more scavenged and cobbled together in a boardroom), backfiring on the desperate efforts of A&Rs looking for the ‘next big thing’, who are then ultimately left scrambling.
However, in spite of such connotations, the remix as an artform has its roots exquisitely embedded in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, particularly in dub, reggae and dancehall genres. Extended mixes were very much the norm to a pre-Ableton and Logic era, with added instrumentals and synths padding out the runtime of a track to further enliven its beat. This was (and very much still is) especially true of house music, providing blissful, euphoric satiety and immaterial sustenance for those yearning for more, delivering precisely that which they sought from the heat of the party. Still, a primary hallmark of the remix is in its dissent from anticipations and so, by splicing and segmenting sound in such foreign, inconceivable ways–textures usurped to one-up the audience–it provided an awe-laden, much-coveted experience, exclusive to zones both free in spirit and rid of surveillance.
Laziness is not true of all either today; the remix album is its own rare undertaking in an artist’s discography, only really made salient by voices who notably go above and beyond to oversee the reinvigoration of their work into sprawling compendiums of subculture. Projects like Kelela’s RAVE:N, The Remixes, SOPHIE’s OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES: NON-STOP REMIX ALBUM, Björk’s Telegram, Shygirl’s Nymph_o, 100 gecs’ 1000 gecs and The Tree of Clues, A.G. Cook’s Apple vs. 7G, Lady Gaga’s Dawn of Chromatica, and, most recently, Charli XCX’s Brat and it’s completely different but it’s also still brat all maintain their maiden body’s critical integrity, while encompassing credits that make sense for their respective architects as they stood at the time of release in culture.
Sometimes, such joint efforts on the individual tracks work well in theory, but turn out less so in practice (e.g., most recently, the ‘Grimes Special’ treatment of Magdalena Bay’s ‘Image’, or even Arca’s reggaeton rework of ‘Aquamarine’ by Addison Rae, billed ‘Arcamarine’, though neither track really transcends their counterpart in material or mood). Yet, by no means does this mean that they are shoddily slapped together or unnatural (which one can oftentimes just feel). Rather, embroiling the adjacent artist sets paramount expectations, but how that artist interacts with the song will never be congruent with what we envision for them; there is perhaps a third, imaginary song we concoct and hold as a precedent–one that will indomitably remain a figment, unrealized, in the mind’s eye of its thinker. Thus, while remix projects speak to the spontaneity of the moment of an album, their tracklist is cohered by dissonance as its thread, which may land for some and not so much for others. They fundamentally wind up as pick-and-choose compilations, enabling listeners to carefully consolidate their own preferred tracklist. Such capacity for curation is very much their beauty, for, contingent on its roster, the transaction may prove just as personal or revelatory as the predecessor song–a most perfect harmony.
