by Of Montreal
(Polyvinyl)
I tend to roll my eyes when I hear somebody wonder aloud what "the point" of a remix is. The question assumes that all people listen to all songs for one reason only. There may not be as many kinds of remixes as there are songs, but in 2008 you could be forgiven for thinking that might be the case, just because this year there have been so damn many, and so many newly visible (see the plethora of Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails fan-made remixes).
Usually the folks doing the above wondering are rock fans of the indie persuasion, for whom the sanctity of a song as originally released by the artist is a given. That's not how it works for other kinds of music, though: Dance music, hiphop, and R&B are all places where signing off on a track is often only the beginning. Rock has been undergoing those same treatments more often of late—sometimes officially sanctioned, often not, as bedroom producers fuck with their files for practice, showing off, posting on blogs, playing at clubs, or some combination thereof.
Such reworking often leads to negligibility, as can remixing other kinds of music, or indeed writing original songs—secondhand creativity has no premium on tedium, trust. But some rock songs are surprisingly well-suited to this kind of treatment, such as "Gallery Piece," the highlight from Of Montreal's Skeletal Lamping. On the album, the song is formally disco—booming four-on-the-floor beat, high-pitched rhythm guitar, noises evoking arcade games—with a heavy new-wave sheen, over which Kevin Barnes sing-songs a rather unnerving list of desires: "I want to crash your car/I want to scratch your cheeks/I want to make you sick/I want to sell you out." Barnes might have called the song "Why Can't I Be You?" but that title was already taken.
It's not the kind of song you might figure would pair well with clubbier dance-music modes, yet Paris electro trio Minitel Rose make something unexpectedly congruent by replacing its innards with frosty synth chords, a grinding octave disco bass line, and a pipsqueak keyboard line (later doubled at lower pitch and on something resembling a '70s ARP). Burying Barnes's vocals in what sounds like leftovers from the second Daft Punk album, the song's list of requests-cum-demands sounds less like his psyche run riot than a lovers' argument overheard at a rave—a surprisingly apt setting for them. 
