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The Blow, "The Love That I Crave" Remixes
Orac Records' co-founder Randy Jones and Paul Dickow (Strategy) both take stabs at remixing the electro-popping, hard-edged dance number "The Love That I Crave" with solid results. The original is twisted and manipulated into stretches of dub-laced pop and sweet, delicate minimalism that is about dance as much as it is about lush beauty.
I had almost forgotten about the remix. A few people know how to work them well, others don't, and for the most part I'm happy enough with the source material. I have no need for a restyled song that will probably sound a lot like the original. Of course, Aphex Twin, Kid 606, Autechre, Plaid, and plenty of others revolutionized the remix for some people. Rarely did a remix from any of the above sound even remotely like the original and, in some cases, it was questionable whether or not the song was a remix instead of a completely new composition. In their cases, however, the music being rearranged and destroyed was instrumental or abstract enough that it practically begged for fresh hands to mess with it. The Blow's "The Love That I Crave" is a pop tune by all standards. It is only two and a half minutes long, it has a lovely, silky chorus held up by some very sexy vocals and a throbbing beat that'd make most any dance-floor denizen happy. The Blow throw their percussion front and center in the mix and play with it just as Jack Dangers does, but their draw is how happily the singer melds with the sound of the rubbery bass and ecstasy-fuelled synthesizers. The beat is loose enough to have sex to, but it throbs more sensually than most club tunes can. Dickow and Randy Jones' approaches to this song are both different, but both hold on to that sensuality for dear life.
Caro provides two remixes and both tend to emphasize the lighter elements of the song. His percussion comes front and center, just as in the originals, but Caro also likes to speed things up a bit. It sounds as though he's spent plenty of times spinning in clubs and, as a result, his first remix, "The Puddles of Love" remix sounds custom-made for DJs. There are all kinds of dub effects sprinkled throughout the first four or so minutes of this version. Voices echo and become soaked in reverb and bass, slowly becoming out of sync with the music and less intelligible. Sci-fi keyboards belch and squirt all over the pounding bass drum that sits on the song from beginning to end, but they never quite carry the groove that the original song contained. If anything, this version sounds a bit flat, as though Caro were trying to formulate an extended jam that never actually gets to the jam part. There are sparks of minimalistic fervor here and there that make it tolerable, but when situated right in the middle of two, more excellent tracks, it's hard to say much more about this. Caro's "The Sea of Love" remix is shorter and more in tune with the original's sexy and sleek presentation. Caro retains a heavy, deep bass sound for this song and adds sweeping string synthetics and choirs in the background. It's a chill-out version of the song. It works well enough because it's both catchy and different enough from the original to maintain my interest. When Caro adds the Japanese sounding guitar into the song, which mimics the vocalist's melodies, the result is pure bliss, a ticket straight to heaven. As that guitar floats through the rest of the song, it's hard not to fall in love with the bouncing rhythms that play out between it, the drums, and the lyrics. This rips his other, more standard remix in half.
Dickow, on the other side, has only one remix, but it's one hell of an effort. He must've heard the echoing, stereo-spanning vocals of the original and decided that he was in love. His remix turns the original into a spaced-out haze: a blur of popping drums and pixilated bass synths. When he adds the piano to the already jumping mix, the song turns into an outright explosion that is equal parts dance and hypnotic arrangement. The robotic vocals that take over in the middle of the song carry both the melody in the song and its surreal soul. It doesn't take Dickow much to turn a song around, to completely alter its face and then drill right into its heart. His minimalistic approach suits this song incredibly well, bringing out the best parts that the original had to offer and adding new elements that turn it into an entirely new piece of pop. At over six minutes, however, it's less pop music than it is some strange hybrid of dub, dance, pop, and psychedelic minimalism. It's a cheap and entertaining slab of 12" vinyl that showcases two talented composers exercising their imagination on great source material.
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