January 2, 1999
Two Pages - Reinterpretations
Junglists and wannabe jazz cats [a]4 Hero[/a] issued an album which veered from brilliant to noodly to downright dire last year....
5 / 10
Junglists and wannabe jazz cats 4 Hero issued an album which veered from brilliant to noodly to downright dire last year. Here comes the inevitable remix package, on which they enlist a raft of house, funkatronica and d&b outfits to hopefully make sense of the confusion which came before.
Except, while you'd imagine the remix squad would decide the noodle must go, many of them have in fact clung to it with a horrifying reverence. The 'groovy' percussive workouts on Mustang's aimless version of 'Mathematical Probability', for instance, are no better than heavy metal guitar masturbation. Come to think of it, since they're twee, sterile and pompous, they are quite a lot worse.
It's only when weightier strains of house and breakbeat surface that '...Reinterpretations' makes amends: Off-World's picturesque and persistent rearrangement of 'Escape' is slick, infectious and fully aware of the merits of conciseness, Masters At Work pump up their singular brand of slinky disco on 'Star Chasers' and, most creditably, the Alpha Omega mix of 'We Who Are Not As Others' achieves full-blown sensory lift-off by way of solid technoid beats and disorderly effects.
So, um, an album which veers from brilliant to noodly to downright dire, then.
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