#3741 Jamie xx, Gil Scott-Heron - We're New Here

3/5 Richard Russel gets inspired by the xx to make a weird Scott-Heron album, Jamie xx makes even weirder, even less Scott-Heron remake. This sounds more like a Jamie xx album that samples the late great master, which is fine, but the least of the 3 (so far!) versions

#3739 Makaya McCraven, Gil Scott-Heron - We're New Again

4/5 maybe it's the singer-producer disconnect of the original that makes I'm New Here such tempting fodder for remaking. Richard Russel took Scott-Heron's contributions in such a strange direction, what others might be possible?

Contrast with the ouroboran influences that lead to Jamie xx's dilution of I'm New Here's best qualities - McCraven's take sounds more like what the original album could have been; it seems very safe to say _should have been. Jazzy, weird, and fucking __immediate, and critically keeping the bookending monologues intact, making them even more impactful by weaving them into the album's essence. Unpredictable, alive, live, paced to float and sting and gloat at the center of the ring, before succumbing to drink. Weathered, weary, bracingly vulnerable, but still dangerous

#3697 Black Coffee - Music if King 2019 Appreciation Mix

3.5/5 sure is house. Flow is rocksolid, feels good in the ears. Makes you wanna groove. Count it.

#3008 The League Unlimited Orchestra - Love and Dancing

Fuck yes. Strip it down. Dare was great, and this just pulls out the filet, chopping it up, saucing it down. A visionary bit of remixing that's a delight to listen to, fans of Daft Punk and LCD take notice. Gorgeously analog, composed with a DJ's effortless sense of pacing. One of the few important 80's records that you'd listen to in 2018 even if it wasn't homework 4.5/5

#2207 Daft Punk / VA - Tron Legacy Reconfigured

Hey Daft Punk fan: this might be more of what you were hoping for.

The remixers attack the hardest, roughest tracks, stretch them out to proper getdown lengths, screw them all around, making 'em even harder, rougher. It's great fun. Everyone brings their own touch, but by stripping off the strings and doubling down on the lightcycle laserblasms, you get more Daft Punk via not-Daft Punk, after all.

If nothing else, falling down the kaleidoscope of soundtrack/Daft Punk/remixer visions again and again's a heady trip worth taking 4/5

#2197 Prins Thomas - Principe Del Norte Remixed

Principe Del Norte left me a little cold - too ambient, too little emotional undercurrent.

This is better: the remixes (+ a few new originals) don't stray too far afield, but the extra textures, glitches, knobturns; the shifts in tone and color and heart; trackwise and albumwide; keep this background-compelling across its two-hour-twenty (!) minutes 3.5/5

#2196 Easy Star All-Stars - Dub Side of the Moon

The All-Stars surprised me with their take on Ok Computer. It was actually pretty ungimmicky, full of listenable versions that stood on their own and cast new light on the originals.

This's probably the album I'm likely to return to: it's a good spaceout listen, with some fun twists, running off into cloudy outros, making bigger swings on the big moments, and trying weirder takes on the weirder songs.

But there's nothing essential about it. It does not escape the gimmick trap.

Meeting the stoner-ready expansiveness of Dark Side doesn't require much of a stretch, and there's no real heart in the performances. Ok Computer's desperation and tightness made for a more challenging adaptation and a more rewarding listen - if you only hear one ESAS gone-reggae album, start there 3/5

#1984 DJ Koze - DJ Kicks

Koze's Kicks turn is introspective, mellow, a series of hypnotic, soft-hooked landscapes sewn together by uncanny vocalizations. Yoni Wolf's yowl, Shatner's muttering, The 2 Bears // Marker Starlings' Albarnian croons, cast among conversations between mechanical voices and chopped samples - it's a backbone of the familiar and the strange that distracts you from the subtle scene changes.

It's a little boring by the end, lacking peak Koze's heady swoons, but you'll come away with memories of a journey to a place where they speak the language, but with different dialects, with customs that inspire you to forget 3.5/5

#1938 Jon Hopkins - Late Night Tales

This is the first volume of Late Night Tales I've come across, but this is Jon Hopkins all right, all small, patient beauty, all float and space, all hypnosis, all forgetting of sound, as drones pulse and arpeggios meander and ghostly voices sweep through. It fits the name, if nothing else - this is music for long nights alone by rainy windows, for underlit living rooms, for feeling small and content and scared, auroras by the bedside 4/5

#1905 Hood Internet - II

It's telling that Donnie Trumpet and Chance show up on the first two tracks on this album: there's a kind of sunny positivity throughout that reminds me of their recent, excellent Surf collab.

II's breezy, adding pop hooks to brighten up hip hop - Girl Talk's funtimes sharing basically none of his actual techniques.

It's almost too easy - almost disposable - but that's the summer for ya - so good it's gone 4/5

#1849 Todd Terje - It's Remix Time Time

Terje's album was built on atmosphere, on strutting energy, on grooves, on cool. That's all stripped away here, everything left soulless, the original's hooks skinned and dangled in place. Just as well that this is a slight little set of 4 tracks: the whole project was a bad idea in the first place 2/5

#1470 DJ Koze - Reincarnations, Pt. 2 The Remix Chapter 2009-2014

Less remixing than very diligent sampling, Koze grabs some core snippet from a song, puts it on a giant dumbwaiter, gives it a halfhearted push, and lets it circle back into view, again and again, while his housey beats and synthy washes pulse and drip.

Highly hypnotic, deeply patient // a little formless, a little overlong. But if you're looking to space out for damn near an hour and a half you could do a lot worse 3.5/5

#972 DJ Koze - Reincarnations The Remix Chapter 2001-2009

Koze's woozy, psychedelic styling shines through each of these songs, a welcome change from the scattershot shitshow that so many remix collections stage. This is a producer who knows what he wants to do, and does it assertively: this could almost pass as a DJ Koze album.

Almost! Sadly, absent the album-level consistency and flow that marked Amygdala, the deep-theta slipperiness can't really settle in, and you hover on the edge of consciousness, tossing and turning when you'd rather be dancing or tripping lightwave subconscious. Probably the best remix album possible from this guy, but his isn't a voice suited to the format 3/5