speed of dark

Not like I'm an expert on remixes, but in my opinion it takes more to make a good remix from another artist's song than speeding it up and slapping on some canned beats. A good remix adds new dimensions to the original song along with those new tempos and refreshes its character, and ideally it adds the recognizable stamp of the remixer without obliterating the original artist entirely.

Available exclusively at BoomKat's website are a set of remixes of tracks from Thom Yorke's 2006 album The Eraser, which just happened to be my favorite CD of that year, by notables such as Modeselektor, Cristian Vogel, The Field, and Fourtet. The Eraser, the product of Thom's love affair with rhythms, is amazingly rich territory for masters of the remix art.

My favorite of these is Burial's homage to "And It Rained All Night," which further solidifies the reputation earned by his recent second album Untrue. BoomKat's site calls it "mighty," which hardly expresses the richness and artistry involved. He brings in strange sounds that hint at buried memories from long ago. From that first hollow metallic flick of a metal lighter he's grabbed me, and those idiosyncratic beats have me in their grip until the rain pours down. Burial boldly adds his own vocal signatures--familiar if you've listened to Untrue--which only accentuates Thom's originals. Fascinating. chk-ching!

Thom Yorke: And It Rained All Night (Burial remix) from The Eraser

The other remixes are far from shabby. My second favorite is the Fourtet remix of "Atoms For Peace." I recommend the whole bunch. You can get them for download now in either mp3 or flac format, or wait for the 12-inch vinyls that will be released sometime in the first part of this year. I took the flacs so I could convert them to mp3 at 256 kbps for prime listening pleasure.

Buy at Boomkat

About my hybrid artwork: I call it, "How to spend way too much time messing with Corel PhotoPaint."