Following up from 2013’s ‘Welcome to my Orphanage’ and standing in many respects as a counterpart to ‘Covers’ (2012, and featuring renditions of songs like ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’, ‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)’ and ‘Riders on the Storm’, ‘Remixes’ casts an eye over Raoul Sinier’s quite extensive output not as an artist in his own right, but as a remixer. The artwork, grotesque as it is, speaks of the nature of the remixer’s job, and seems to question at what point does the original artist become usurped by the remixer? Ideally, of course, both artists and remixer retain their own identities within the new version, the result of a kind of ;third mind’ cut-up collaboration. But the danger is some kind of weird hybrid that simply sounds cobbled together. So, the cover drawing depicts a man with a dog’s head dragging a dog which has a man’s head. Raoul Sinier’s head, in fact.
This is quite representative of Sinier’s darkly surrealist artworks, for the man has many talents, and his remixes are, it has to be said, very good indeed. Instead of the brutal incongruity the cover implies, the 12 tracks here are all seamlessly woven so it’s impossible to tell where the work of the ‘original’ artist ends and that of the remixer begins. Granted, I’m not familiar with the original versions of many of the tracks here, but the fact this doesn’t impede the listening enjoyment of the album is testament to the quality of the works, which do unquestionably bear Sinier’s distinctive style, which marries the cinematic with the bleak to create sounds that resonate.
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The Cex track ‘12exalt’ is – contradictorily – simultaneously stripped back and hectic, some blustering synths bubble under a stomping disco beat and a slow chord progression reminiscent of Visage’s ‘Fade to Grey’. The theatrical sweep and driving disco of Rob Hubbard’s ‘Monty on the Run’ is a definite highlight. However, the real strength of the album is its remarkably consistent quality – something that’s extremely rare in the field of remixes – which makes ‘Remixes’ all the more impressive.
Raoul Sinier Online
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