polaroids of androids

Remix albums are never fantastic. With so many cooks in the kitchen we very rarely get treated to anything grander than a toasted cheese sandwich. Unlike most releases of this nature Mixed Blood hasn't been released on a major record label and therefore doesn't instantly stink of 'an easy way to make money'. However, this is a pretty bland album with several of the remixers guilty of overdoing the electronic arrangements and failing to utilise the best asset at their disposal - the fragile and often spellbinding nature of Wally De Backer's voice and music.

The album starts with promise. Joe Hardy's remix of Heart's a Mess, Karnivool's surprisingly entertaining cock-rock version of The Only Way and ENS' re-jigging of Puzzle With a Piece Missing are all fantastically well executed. They are mainly successful because of the subtle nature in which they have been reworked as well as the fact that they primarily rely a heavy rhythm section as the backbone - not unlike the originals.

Learnalilgivinanlovin is not the kind of song that would be easy to remix but Bass Kleph's over-electronic effort is still far from impressive. Bitrock and Infusion's version of Thanks For Your Remix and The Only Thing I Know both sound as though they are powered by one of the free samples you get with a 90's Casio keyboard with Gotye's vocals sloppily pasted over the top. They are the kind of uncreative doof-doof shit I thought we killed about five years ago.

The closing trio of songs are more like covers than remixes. Velure's 'deut' of Puzzle With a Piece Missing is very nice with the raw drum beats working very well with her voice. Inga Liljestrom's haunting cover of Coming Back sends shivers up the spine and Fourth Floor Collapse's 'stretched' version of 'Worn Out Blues', although a bit toooo slooooww, is still a very nice way to close out the album.

Overall, the shit moments on this compilation - generally the chunk of lazy 90's techno in the middle - kills the overall enjoyableness. I really should have taken a loyal reader's suggestion when I was telling him that I was buying this album and bought Gotye's first album Boardface instead. His original work is far better than any reinterpretation.