From: gtaylor@vme.heurikon.com (Gregory Taylor)
Subject: Review: "High Tech/No Crime: The YMO Remix Album"
Reply-To: gtaylor@vme.heurikon.com (Gregory Taylor)
Organization: Heurikon Corporation, Madison, WI
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 11:55:06 GMT
Followup-To: rec.music.misc
Keywords: YMO



Isn't it always the way it goes? I make a brief mention of another album
in the midst of a review and the mailbox fills up asking about the aside
just as regularly as the larger thing one planned to review. So, by 
request, a brief mention:

Hi-Tech/No Crime: The YMO remix album [Alfa Records ALCA-323]

Camouflage - Mark Gamble Micro-mix (I) 1:35
Firecracker - The Shamen Remix 5:35
Multiplies - the Altern8 Remix 4:55
Light in Darkness - the 808 State Remix 5:10
Behind the Mask - the Orbital Remix 5:48
Loom - Mark Gamble Micro-mix (II) :44
Technopolis - the Rhythmatic Remix 5:26
La Femme Chinoise - the LFO Remix 4:47
Castalia - Mark Gamble Micro-mix (III) 2:26
Tighten Up (Japanese Gentlemen Stand Up) - the Robert Gordon Remix 6:09
Shadows on the Ground - the Sweet Excorcist Remix 5:56
Rydeen - the Graham Massey Remix 6:35

As the title implies, this is a "who's who" remix disc, each piece of
which takes something from the YMO recorded corpus as its starting material.
One of the interesting features of the disc for me comes down to the
technical constraints posed by the project; without a whole lot of
looping, one winds up making shorter, more compressed remixes [which
may alleviate the "let's continue this for 32 bars and no one will
notice since they're dancing instead of listening" problem for some of
you] seem the order of the day, and you get to hear a couple of outfits
whose remixes aren't near as prevalent [unlike, say, 808 State, who've
even worked with Tony Bennett :-)] ...the Shamen and LFO, for example.

Opening caveats: If you're a diehard YMO fan who expects slightly redone
versions of your favorite hits, you may not care for what happens here.
In many cases, we're looking at your average "bebop" kind of structure:
play the recognizeable "tag" for the piece to set the listener up and
then start mucking about. In some cases (the Mark Gamble bits), you're
really going to hear a single short idea put through a couple of brief
transformations rather than anything resembling either a "remix" or
something faithful to the original [I can't help thinking that Mark
Gamble must have a set of the Audiomedia Pro Tools and a lot of time
on his hands....].

The range of variation here runs the gamut from what I'd more or less
have expected from Orbital and 808 State [give us the hook, drop in the
drumloop, and modify on measure boundaries divisible by 4] to some more
ambient work [LFO's spoken-word French additions to Technopolis]. I've got
a feeling that to an extent, the serious rave person might tend to find
the range of work here difficult [it may not flow as one would wish for
ze ance floor] in terms of movement and short in terms of time [as 
opposed to the Alfa "In the 90s" series with it's 19 minute long/10 minute
short remixes] and pretty broad ranging in terms of style [particularly
the way the Gamble micromixes break things up]. For me [a decidedly 
more "listen" oriented guy], it makes the whole thing more interesting.
Oddly, the two really most extreme remixes to come out of this project
(a 1:40 "ambient reprise" remix of "Light in Darkness" from 808 State
and a 10:00 Orb dubfest rather loosely based on "Tong Poo") that I
find the most interesting wound up *only* on the "rare and remixed"
disc of the YMO-Techno Bible box set. As an index of possibilities, I
can sure recommend it to the serious collector [that is, one who isn't
put off by the nasty exchange rates for the Yen] and devotee of the
remixpersons listed above.

Respectfully Submitted,
Gregory Taylor
--
A machine plays many pianos at once and the music holds them aloft, a different
tune for each ship. Freedom has nothing to do with control and control nothing
to do with my weak heart lonely for its birthday and the excitement of pure
sunlight and of snow parting into countless buoyant shapes over the airfield.
Newsgroups: rec.music.misc