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Various - DFA Remixes Vol 2 (DFA)
UK release date: 2 October 2006
4 stars
Various - DFA Remixes Vol 2

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track listing

1. Tiga - Far From Home
2. Junior Senior - Shake Your Coconuts
3. Hot Chip - Colours
4. N.E.R.D. - She Wants To Move
5. Nine Inch Nails - Hand That Feeds
6. Goldfrapp - Slide In
7. Chromeo - Destination Overdrive
8. UNKLE - In A State
On the face of it eight tracks seems pretty meagre fare for a remix album, even if the remix team is the celebrated DFA. Insert the disc into your player and a new fear arises, the realisation that this still means seventy minutes of music. How can a good remix possibly sustain interest over ten minutes or more?

Happily in this case the answer is easy to attain. The mammoth reworkings of Tiga, Goldfrapp and UNKLE are all unexpectedly tightly structured, despite making a small album's worth of music between them. Even in the case of the In A State remix, nearly a quarter of an hour long, DFA secure a hypnotically trancy piece of music - a haunting, out of body experience. For Tiga the approach is totally different, the harmony static the whole way through but as the tension and textural layers build the effect is thrilling, the vocals eventually swamped by a whoosh of synthesized noise.

One aspect of the DFA remixing style that sets them apart is the feeling that there is actually someone playing the bass and drums, not just channelling them through a computer. The scattergun approach to some of the drum fills and the lithe basslines draw much from late 1970s Manchester, but combined with the studio trickery up top secure a distinctive sound, with a captivating listen guaranteed.

The final versions tend to be far removed from their original counterparts. Junior Senior's Shake Your Coconuts is impossibly lean and funky, dancing to totally different harmonies. N.E.R.D. get a bass sound made of pure elastic, while a real revelation awaits listeners to Nine Inch Nails' Hand That Feeds, a hip swinging piece of funk with an irresistible four to the floor groove. Hot Chip's Colours, meanwhile, seems to have been coated in gold leaf, a softly meditative vocal dressed in elaborate keyboard clothing.

The only mix that doesn't quite seem to nail it is the Goldfrapp, impeccably constructed yet somehow not quite adding up to the sum of its parts.

This is a fine second volume though, serving further notice of DFA's production talent, as if that were needed! It's an indication of why DJs should drop their records and not just their name.

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