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Call it a comeback

Music Features

Remix revolutions

Madonna, it turns out, has never put out an official collection of her club remixes. She’s owned the dance floor since 1980, but over the course of that quarter-century she’s accrued multiple label imprints, contracts, and legal agreements that would make a comp like Madonna: The Greatest Remixes a near impossibility. Sarah McLachlan, however, has been with Arista in the US her entire career. The Canadian has also maintained a relationship with her home country in Nettwerk Productions out of Vancouver. It’s the sort of situation that facilitates a collection like her recent 10-song Bloom: Remix Album (Arista). The disc frames her æthereal voice in trance grooves. Bhangra-jungle guru Talvin Singh retools “Answer”; yawny downtempo dudes Thievery Corporation tackle “Dirty Little Secret.” But it’s the trance productions that make the most of McLachlan’s vocal talents. Tom Middleton’s mix of “Vox,” one of her earliest songs, may be a bit simplistic, but its charms outweigh its shortcomings. Gabriel & Dresden’s treatment of “Fallen” is aptly named the “Anti-Gravity Mix”: the track hovers for well over seven minutes without ever quite touching down, vocal edits weaving through effects like birds through clouds. We also get Black Eyed Pea will.i.am’s mix of “Just like Me,” which includes, we’re told, “Interpolations” from the song “Cat’s in the Cradle.” Not sure what that means. The most intriguing track comes courtesy of Domino recording artists the Junior Boys. Those droll indie-rock darlings (and fellow Canucks) filter “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy” through their synth-heavy, slo-mo disco sound to great effect. Rarely has McLachlan sounded this hip.

Britney Spears and hip DJs have a love/hate relationship, but that doesn’t stop the pop-tart princess from roping in some clever cats to rework some of her biggest tracks on the new B in the Mix (Jive). A rumored DFA remix is absent, but recent Vice signees Justice fit Spears into their trademark cut-up electro jam quite nicely. “Me Against the Music (JUSTICE Remix)” is AC/DC meets Kool and the Gang. Most of B in the Mix is unreleased — which means many of these remixes were licensed specifically for this CD. Jacques Lu Cont — a/k/a Stuart Price, an English producer closely aligned with Madonna — puts his warpy, French Touch stamp on his “Breathe on Me” remix. Lu Cont’s remixes rarely dip below five minutes — his 2005 Grammy-winning remix of Gwen Stefani’s “It’s My Life” was epic — but here the man cuts Britney off just before the four-minute mark. Britney aficionados should seek out the bootleg remix from current club king James Holden for a glowing example of what the track is capable of. Other efforts are toe-curling. Valentin’s remix of “Everytime” is the sort of thing that gives trance a bad name, all synth stabs and whip-boom hard house, and Hex Hector’s “Don’t Let Me Be the Last To Know” is more of the same hyper, crescendo’d kitsch. Unlike McLachlan’s resplendent delivery, Britney’s breathy hiccup vocals don’t do much floating around these trancy beasts. The real tragedy might be the unreleased remix of “ . . . Baby One More Time,” which turns one of the most hook-laden songs of our day into a flat ride through hard-trance hell.

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