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. 