Flowermix [Import]

It's a long way from Oakenfold, Goa or the Ministry of Sound, but there's much to enjoy on this 1996 set of trance/techno reworkings of tracks from No-Man's "Flowermouth" album. Names both familiar and obscure appear behind the controls: on the "unknown" side there's Prophets Of Bliss and Os (him of Darkroom closet infamy), on the more famous side there's David Kosten (who was recently wowing British critics in his acoustic-electronica guise as Faultline) and No-Man's own Steven Wilson and Tim Bowness. Moods change from Gallic nosebleeder to Orb oceanic to Arvo Part on stellar acid, but quality control is very high: and if "Flowermix" is all some way off dance music's best-beaten trails it's all the fresher for it. Former King Crimson alumni - Robert Fripp, Mel Collins - coast through several tracks on sax, guitar and Soundscapes - to tie past and phuture strands of music-vision together. One for chilling out to with cinematic eyes. 

I have a long history of having issues with remix albums. Invariably, I always seem to love them when I first get them and then sour on them pretty soon after. Years later, I pull them off the shelf and can't remember why I hadn't listened to them in ages.

So take my review here with a bit of a grain of salt.

"Flowermix" is a remix of the superb Flowermouth, all things being even, an album that actually asks for the remix treatment-- programmed beats, deep layered music, etc. And actually, I'll give it this, "Flowermix" works pretty well. No-Man member Steven Wilson tackles four of the remixes himself, proving to be quite able at the task-- "Angel Gets Caught in the Beauty Trap" gets recast as "Angeldust" by Wilson, loaded in a throbbing bass, Robert Fripp-provided soundscapes and featuring vocalist Tim Bowness' voice sounding as if it's right next to your ear, turns out to be one of the real standouts on the record. Likewise, closer "Born Simple", an extended retake of the absolutely superb "Simple", works out to be pretty superb itself. Wilson pairs Fripp's soundscape with a heartbeat that captures the deeper creepiness of the source track. Wilson also gives a good retake of "You Grow More Beautiful" that emphasizes the funky sounds of the piece and produces a concise four minute rock tune that to my ears beats out the original. But his fourth remix is one of those pieces that just kills me on remix albums-- "Heal the Madness", a quiet retake of "Animal Ghost" (though it took me ages to figure that out) is pretty much breackneck beats and unintelligible vocal samples. Seven minutes of it. And really, I quite could have lived without that.

Moreover, a pair of remixes from Os and one from The Prophets of Bliss fall into the "stuff I didn't need" camp-- "Faith in You" (a remix of "You Grow More Beautiful"), "All I See" (of "Soft Shoulders") and "Sample" (of "Simple") end up being sort of trancey things that don't hold my attention, the latter in particular ends up being nine minutes of oscillating samples. David Kosten's remix of "Teardrop Fall" (titled "Why the Noise?") fares a little better, Kosten puts together kind of a neat groove and a cohesive sound from the source piece. Having said that, it sounds like the sort of thing you'd find filling out an album-- it's inoffensive, but not terribly interesting.

What is interesting however is "Natural Neck", remixed by Kosten and vocalist Bowness. It features swelling strings pretty much on loop for its length, something I didn't think much of until listening to it again for the first time in ages-- those strings end up planted on "Only Rain" off of 2001's Returning Jesus several years later.

Bottom line for me though, three great mixes, a couple pieces of some modest interest and a bunch of stuff I didn't need to hear makes an ok album, but since two of those remixes ended up on the reissue of Flowermouth ("Angeldust" and "Born Simple", albeit in the latter's case in a slightly truncated-- for the better-- form), it seems hard to justify the expense to track this now out-of-print record down.