Taken from last year's powerful album Vaudeville, this new set of remixes of 'Requiem', radically transforms and updates the already haunting original.
Efdemin's 'Journey To The Stars' mix is perhaps closest to the original, but is fleshed out with extra tonal work and deep echoes. Tone by tone it gradually drifts from the original in an intriguing way. The handclaps give it a more clubby feel, but it enhances rather than sacrifices 'Requiem's' intricate textures.
The 'Dies Irae' version by Kangding Ray is a slower,
darker and heavier interpretation. Subdued or potential chord structures buried in the original are brought to the surface, creating a tough but still shimmering, hallucinatory atmosphere through subtle modulation and transformation.
Regis' sinisterly-titled 'Human Host' has a grinding bass and strict beats, yet is more subtle and expansive than some of his mixes. 'Requiem's' familiar eerie chords are narrowed into
swirling, malevolent drones that radiate tension. Heading towards the halfway mark there's a long beat-less interlude of dark drones. Mutated fragments of the original clamber out of this black hole accompanied by reinforced beats. From here on the track turns more darker and more severe before fading out uneasily.
Last in line and instantly furthest from the original is Dasha Rush's outstanding 'Requiem For Humanity' version. It's a radical and haunted piano re-arrangement that slowly turns back towards a more electronic sound. It seems obvious in retrospect, but probably not even Kennedy could have imagined such a radical re-working. It's all the more radical with the added despairing vocal sample listing the woes of the world: "we have lost the way … we have barricaded the world into hate". It's an absolutely unique and remarkable hybrid - the closest description might be a kind of apocalyptic techno jazz noir with a martial beat but it's so other-worldly that standard descriptors scarcely fit it.
July 6th, 2015
12” // Digital Download
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