A warning before you read this review, it is written by a real fan. And although we don’t like the obvious 80ies sounds in a lot of other artists (even today, where the end of Electro Clash became history already), here they don’t appear to be mere and empty quotations but something new, fresh and original. If you don’t fear more eulogy, read on…

So, yeah, a word about those wonderful Junior Boys. Last year when their album ‘So This Is Goodbye’ came out, it probably was the most consoling experience for all those souls which had been left by their lovers. To name but one possible dimension of their truly enchanting music. Then came the Sonar Festival Barcelona 2007. And although the sound on the main stage was not the best, the Junior Boys somehow lived up to their studio recordings, giving the whole thing a bit more of a dancefloor feel in the process.

So anyway, then I just happen to stumble across a bunch of Junior Boys remixes marked Promo CDM - whatever for. So yeah cool, there we have an ingenious Hot Chip RM of my almost all-time favorite ‘In The Morning’. And although Hot Chip do a good job here (like most of the time, they’re just cool geezers themselves), they don’t make it up to the hights reached by Alex Smoke’s RM (not on this CD) of that very same song. The Smoker makes a real dance hymn out of the rather thoughtful and poppy original - he manages that by not only putting a cool, state-of-the-art beat underneath the melodic arcs, but creates a track that comes across as truly organic. As if it would be an original composition in the fist place - maybe by a yet unknown Border Community artist. The Hot Chip approach is more subtle though - more fiddly and idiosyncratic if you wish. More listening than dancing for sure, but then…
And although we have a really nice, dubby Kode 9 RM plus a quite mediocre RM by Tensnake, an artist I never heard of before, the other highlight of that particular disc certainly is Carl Craig’s adaptation. What a journey from a very simple, but endlessly hypnotic opening beat towards a clever escalation and some quite surprising turnarounds (simple voice delays on one word for example). This definitely sounds remix - unlike the Alex Smoke track. But one which is crafted to a minimalist perfection only a few people reach these days, among them Radio Slave or Ricardo Villalobos.
So listen up your DJs with a poetic disposition, get these three remixes and both, the Berlin Panoramabar minimalist geek and the Stockholm glamour girl WILL follow you.

This DJ and listening recommendation brought to you by Zuckermann

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