airships rule

i'll never get sick of remixes. i keep waiting for that one day where i'll play yet another remix of some blawgged out song and immediately start dry heaving, but it hasnt come yet. remixes, edits, dubs, vocals, mashups, touchups, makeups, fuckups, it doesn't matter, i'll listen to it all. i'll listen to any song all the way through, and then decide right then and there whether it's a piece of shit or if it's something worth listening to twice.

there are a few fairly obvious reasons why people love remixes. the absolute novelty of a "remix" makes it automatically interesting. it's like when you hear about scarlett johansson covering tom waits - you know it'll probably suck, but you feel compelled to hear scarlett johansson try to sing (actually covers might be an exception, seeing as i just found this video of hilary duff trying to cover the who***). so when i come across a remix of the rolling stones my initial reaction is somewhere along the lines of "thats ridiculous you can't remix the stones but i guess i have to give it a listen".

second, a remix of a song can bring it to a whole other level. a good song can be made great. a great song can be made danceable. a danceable song can be made laid-back. most bad songs stay bad. but if there's any redeemable part, any hook, any riff, any verse that has some sort of listenable quality to it, a good remix can be sure to highlight that.

finally, a good artist puts his own touch into a remix. sometimes it gets old - mstrkrft has a one-two punch formula to remixing songs that works extremely well, but when you've listened to every one a million times, it gets a little stale. offbeat distortion, handclaps/cowbell, rinse and repeat. sometimes its incredible - fake blood not only has some of the best breakdowns in his songs, he manages to micro-edit vocal samples to make each of the artists he remixes sing "fake blood" even if they never use the words "fake" or "blood" in the original. a few of my fav remixes:

kylie minogue - wow (mstrkrft remix)

little boots - stuck on repeat (fake blood remix)

messinian - throw it away (designer drugs remix)

santogold - say aha (tepr remix)

the rolling stones - you can't always get what you want (soulwax remix)



***SERIOUSLY WHAT THE FUCK