The Faint – Danse Macabre Remixes

The remix album is always a trickyone, and easy to explain for outfits such as TheOrb and Armand Van Helden who have made aname for themselves in remixing, or in the case ofpeople like Steve Reich who have submittedtheir work for reinterpretation by other artists.

But when it comes to The Faint, it’seasy to detect a stop gap being filled, particularlyas they admit on their website that “it will be awhile yet” before the next album.

There’s some impressive names onremix duty here. Paul Oakenfold, Photek, Jacques Lu Cont and JuniorSanchez head the queue, whilst it’s good to seeother less known names such as Jagz Kooner andMojolators included.

Opening up, Lu Cont’sbreezy Thin White Duke take on the Conductor grinds toa halt for the vocals, overdoing the strings a tadbefore normal service is resumed. Then there’s thefirst mix of Posed To Death, with an inventive mixfrom The Calculators which is surprisingly annoying!

Oakenfold’s mix of Glass Danse is one of the bestthings here, a big breakbeat sound emerging from somesubtle production touches. Photek’s take onTotal Job is very Gary Numan, dark andmenacing, always threatening to speed up but neverquite moving forward quickly enough. In fact a commontheme of the album is that the remixes are curiouslyundanceable, and for the most part I found my feetrooted to the ground. A good example of this isJagz Kooner’s take on Agenda Suicide, which is fast butineffective.

Best beat, by a country mile, isthe Mojolators’ four to the floor selection. If theother nine tracks here had half their funk this wouldbe a collection well worth getting. As it is, thisDanse Macabre is disjointed, lacks true variety andfalls well short of being that rare thing – a goodremix album.