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Including 4 new songs and 13 remixes,
Expand Your Head slices, dices, and reassembles the Lords of Acid's X-rated techno-raunch into a towering stack of dance-floor trends. Opening with the new "Am I Sexy," the Lords follow suit à la the campy big beat of
Dimitri from Paris. Newbie number two, "As I Am," is standard-issue rave-alert acid house, while "Who Do You Think You Are," with its lyrically colorless rap screamed above industrial guitars, is a toss off (ahem). The last new song on the disc, and the album's shining moment, is the hidden 17th track, a righteously down-and-dirty rendition of
Patti LaBelle's "Lady Marmalade." Here, the Lords are in their element creating heavy, electrifying waterbed rhythms as Jade-4U seductively beckons, "
Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?" The rest of the album is a collection of singles remixed by some of electronic music's biggest superstars, including
KMFDM,
Luc Van Acker,
Joey Beltram,
Frankie Bones, and Richie Hawtin, a.k.a.
Plastikman. The songs are clearly remixed into each artists' signature sound (ranging from industrial to Detroit techno), but most are too heady, sapping the bump-and-grind
oomph from the originals. And none of the tracks are representative of the remixers' best work. Lords of Acid arbiters will be underwhelmed.
--Beth Massa
