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Genre Dispatch: Remix: by Andria Lisle
Various Artists - The Now Sound Redesigned
[Light In The Attic]
4.5/5 STARS Stereolab, Peanut Butter Wolf, Danger Mouse and more try on '60s pop for size
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The Free Design seems tailor-made for contemporary record-store diggers: The sister/brother group played spacey folk pop in the late '60s and early '70s, releasing insipidly titled albums like Kites Are Fun and Stars/Time/Bubbles/Love on Enoch Light's Project 3 label that beckon Summer of Love archeologists like DJ Nobody from the used bins today. Dazzled by the bright bubblegum harmonies and other-worldly instrumentations of The Free Design, Nobody and a handful of other musicians decided to resurrect the group's long-forgotten legacy, harvesting and remixing three 12"s worth of tracks over the last few years.
The Now Sound Redesigned - a CD compilation of the 12"s - is just what a remix album should sound like: fun, fanatical and freestyling. Sharpshooters overlay the Gregorian chant-styled vocals of "Don't Turn Away" with a head-bumping, hip-shaking beat, while Stereolab injects "Harve Daley Hix" with synthesized whirrs and chirps. Belle & Sebastian's Chris Geddes turns the forward-looking "2002-A Hit Song" into a dance-hall hit, while Caribou (formerly Manitoba) hijacks "Dorian Benediction" for an astonishing eight minutes, delving into hard psych and free jazz before the journey's end.
Stylistically, The Now Sound Redesigned is all over the place: Danger Mouse (the mixer behind last year's breakaway mix-tape smash The Grey Album) collaborates with Murs for the funky "To A Black Boy," while the Super Furry Animals land their hot air balloon in the midst of a renaissance fair on "The Proper Ornaments." But the kibosh is deliberate - the 19-song CD, which unwinds like a collecting fiend's iPod shuffle, will have you scrambling for the track listing, trying to decipher who does what to which song where.
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