Why I Never Finish Anything.
I’m a big fan of Frank Sinatra. As Halou we were lucky enough to remix him (WB Records chose not to use it and it’s still unreleased, I believe) though, obviously, our music has very little in common with his. Among other things, Sinatra didn’t write his own material, which meant that he and his team gathered songs from all over the place and arranged and re-arranged them how they saw fit at that moment. There was never so much attachment to one recording of a song that they couldn’t re-record it in another studio with a different arranger and different musicians. Of course, studio recordings in those days were mostly just live recordings of current arrangements so it made sense to re-record when a singer would change bandleader/arranger, etc. If you follow jazz, this kind of thing is even more common, though, again, it’s mainly the variations of live performances that get recorded.
I’m not bold enough to carry a Sinatra comparison very far when talking about my music, but I do share the opinion that a good song can, and should, be subjected to multiple recordings. New recordings can often pull out different characteristics of the original and keep a song relevant, as opposed to it just sitting dormant in some dusty back catalogue. Remixes are similar, in a way, but generally get too carried away with production and rarely have the song, itself, as their focus. For me, the more I like a song – apart from the production – the more ripe a candidate it is for a fresh approach. It can be as simple as a new rhythm (ie: “Everything Is OK (Different)“) or new atmospherics (ie: “Political“). Not every one is a success, either. I’m not in love with the version of “Arrhythmia” we put on “Beneath Trembling Lanterns.” In some ways, that version to me feels like a step backward – especially being on that album, as eclectic as it is. Our best re-recording to date is probably the version of “Hollywood Ending” on the final Halou album. It doesn’t make the original obsolete, it just provides an alternative.
Generally speaking, I’m not a huge fan of remixes as they usually appear. I’m almost always interested, though, in hearing people redo their own material with a new approach (I don’t count the cynical money-grabbing motive of re-recording your one hit and putting it on your new album to sell it). It’s pretty uncommon these days, as far as I can tell, apart from radio sessions and live versions, so I can’t point to a lot of examples in other people’s work. I do think the re-recordings that Mew did of some of their early tracks were really good – and, in some cases, quite different – versions of those songs.
In the past, we’ve noted these recordings as “different” versions to make it clear that they are not the same and, yet, not so changed as to call them remixes, or whatever. Now, we’re just about to release a disc containing four “halcyon” versions of some of our recent tracks (“halcyon” being a more descriptive word for “calm,” in this case). The “halcyon” versions are stripped down – some more than others – and rearranged to bring out different elements of the songs. It’s something I’ve wanted to do with a couple of these tracks for a while – “The Droplet Sounds” and “Bleached White,” in particular. Our recent track, “Radium Girls,” is the most changed , and is really more of a remix in the traditional sense (we changed the title of the song, too, to further note the difference – here’s a clip of the new version). The lines are blurry.
I’m definitely curious to hear different perspectives on this if you have any thoughts.
- Ryan
I like this approach a lot, and I know I would do exactly the same thing, were I creating songs of my own, because there are always many directions to go with an emerging song, and rarely is only one such direction “correct”. Thus the remix. I try to always give remixes a chance even if the original version was not a song that grabbed me, because the remixer might choose to emphasize parts of the song I liked (or didn’t notice before).
For me personally, this would also solve the problem of what to do when I start to think all my new ideas are rehashes of my old ones… treat them as new and explore as fully as I have time/resources for.
As for whether it’s a ripoff to put remixes on new albums, well, I think that just depends on how much work you put into the remix. Sure, if it doesn’t sound very different, then someone may feel cheated, but honestly, they’d feel the same way about a completely new song that didn’t go in a direction they want to follow, wouldn’t they? So ultimately, what’s the difference? If your fans (or more often, your critics) think a remix is either too similar or too unfulfilling, you’ll usually hear about it