It’s a bit late in the 20th century to still be in thrall to the punk spirit of ’77, so it comes as a relief to find that Siouxsie Sioux one of the [a]Sex Pistols[/a]’ coterie in the infamous Bill Grundy affair, and the face that launched a thousand goth backcombs is off in search of new revolutions.
An album of remixes of tracks by Siouxsie’s post-Banshees band, The Creatures, ‘Hybrids‘ could well have looked to the post-PiL career of John Lydon for a list of pratfalls that an old punk could make – in summary, the straightforward techno rumble of Leftfield‘s ‘Open Up‘, good experimental excursions into the electronic avant-garde, rather sad pleas for credibility. But ‘Hybrids‘ actually works best when it’s undergoing strange, terrible mutations at the hands of a satisfyingly perverse coven of remixers; The Black Dog, tearing ‘Guillotine‘ into scraps of noise, and pasting them back into a bloody sonic collage, or The Beloved, coupling the vacant dub of ‘Disconnected‘ to a gaunt, wasted disco pulse.
About halfway through, it becomes uncomfortably obvious that the best tracks are the ones that obscure the original songs behind sheets of edgy, spun-out electronica. Conceptually, though, ‘Hybrids‘ clutches the underside of the zeitgeist with dark passion. Here’s an old punk that’s not to be written off.