Customer Reviews

Xfm's the Remix Album

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This compilation is a simple but great idea. Here in London, XFM is the only decent radio station, but boy it is decent! They play brilliant, alternative music across the board and have all sorts of varied shows. One is The Remix, a show where remixes of tracks played on the station are aired. The two DJ's are true music affecianado's, not some celebrity presenter but two people with a passion for great music.

And it's not any two-bit remix that gets played on the show. These are tracks which transform and add to the main track to interesting and creative affect. And here is no less than a TRIPLE CD of the best tracks from the show. As the sleeve notes say, "This album represents those endless hours of trainspotting, vinyl-obsessing and hardcore collecting: were you to track down all these tracks individually, you'd be looking at several years off your life and a second mortgage!" What a class effort!

In most cases this is rock music in dance remixes, but not always. Highlights include the Les Rhythmes Digitales remix of Placebo's Pure Morning, where they transform the punky original to a mournful sounding dance track (vocals kept intact, of course) reminiscent of the best work of Underworld; the budding, euphoric, Lee Coombes remix of New Order's Crystal; the Sunday Social Remix of Manics' La Tristessa Durrera, from a building indie rock track into a grooving dance-rock track reminiscent of Stone Roses and The Music. They even let an unknown DJ remix Gorillaz' 19-2000 in a competition held on the station for the best home-made remix.

Some bands are less suited to beats: particularly those on CD3 (Starsailor, Travis, David Gray), but two of the remixes are the best on the whole CD make it all totally worthwhile:

Mark B and Blade - Ya Don't See The Signs (Grant Nicholas Remix): fantastic remix of a rap song with added grungey guitar and howling rock synths from the frontman of Welsh punk/pop/grunge/indie act Feeder;

and Radiohead - Planet Telex (Karma Sunra Mix): Bends-era Radiohead track remix is simply stunning transformation that is everything a remix should be.

Throughout, vocals are kept intact so still shows what has been done to the original. This is top stuff for remix lovers, fans of alternative music, or rock lovers wanting to get into dance or vice versa: it is a perfect meeting point of the two. It is the coolest, hippest compilation to hit the market in years. A big fat 5 stars.