What makes a remix? Take the best bits of your stuff and plenty of my stuff and make it sound like ME or take the essence of mine and the heart of yours to make something new? I know what I go for, the remix that sounds like collaboration, made from respect, taking the music you love in another direction. And that’s what it sounds like we have in store with the ‘Juice B mixed’ EP. Four revisions of tracks from NYC electronic pragmatists Battles’ 2019 ‘Juice B Crypts LP’ from remixers who will be determined to break out somewhere but keep the source album’s wiring.
Due for full release digitally and on must –have vinyl via Warp on November 20th, you may have already caught the EP’s first preview cut, the reshape of the ‘Juice B Crypts’ title track by LA low-fi abstract turntablist Delroy Edwards. Taking the frenetic throb of the breakneck original, Edwards slowed and industrialised it Cabaret Voltaire style with a less sheen more grime approach. Now comes the second appetiser, ‘Stirling Bridge’ fashioned by DJ Dairy & DJ Orient a.k.a Cameron Picton and Morgan Simpson, the rhythm engine within the Black Midi avant -rock machine.
Rather than recast a single track, Dairy and Orient (!?) connect with the playfulness of ‘Juice B Crypts’ as a whole, using indistinguishable snippets as the base. Starting with a glistening synth wash the track soon references Battles swarming melody lines before settling into an almost EDM bounce. Scattered new jazz glitches and warped reversed sections pop up but ‘Stirling Bridge’ is seamlessly stitched with a deft light and airy touch, a shared characteristic with Battles more recent direction.
With other remix tracks from electro-cosmic DJ Nigga Fox and Berlin techno boss Shed, the ‘Juice B mixed’ looks set to become further evidence of the remixes’ potential to push on.
