Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
cheap, good fun, 26 Nov 2008
After springs disappointing, and generic, delibrately dated and slender "Last Night", Moby dispenses with his staple format - the single - in favour of this, a remix album. Since Madonna's "You Can Dance" (which was the first remix album in about 1984), the remix album has always been, in many eyes, the runt of the litter. An effort in marking time, an attempt to squeeze out some more money for a largely effortless record that relies on the work of others, hastily assembled with no care or love. Or a remix album could be a brilliant reinterpetation of the well known and allow a new perspective, a new frame on an old painting and let you see it and experience anew.
Thankfully, the best acts sees 'the remix album' as not just a chance to rework, and reshape well known material, but also to create an alternate reality for these songs. Like Andy Warhol's portraits, the art comes not always from the original, but what is done to it. The craft of the remix record comes from choosing the material that creates an effective narrative, presents a musical journey, and also showcases the experimental, and often unsung side of the artist that is flattened in favour of obvious cookie-cutter stuff designed for mass consumption.
Unfortunately, "Last Night:Remixed" isn't anything so much as a poorly compiled selection of remixes. If Moby is the compiler behind this selection, his mixing skills have deserted him from a decade ago, where he presented the brilliant, and mostly seamlessly-mixed "Everything Is Wrong Remixed : DJ Evil Ninja Moby" album. Here some of the mixes are blunt, the tools obvious, the tempo and key shifts are not handled with any smoothness, and the remixes are not always particularly interesting. A good DJ will make an effective mix transition feel organic, natural, inevitable, and exciting, where the mixes compliment each other, and happen in such a way as they feel part of one cohesive whole : some of the mixing on this set works well on this basis, and plenty of it does not (the first one, from a remix of "I Love To Move In Here" to "Ooooh Yeah"is hamfisted at best).
Over these 14 remixes of 7 songs - not even half of the parent album - it's fairly distinct that Moby has decided to ditch singles chock full of remixes, pull together the least boring versions, and mash them all together in one extended EP that's an album in length and girth. There's also little dynamics : the remix of "Live For Tommorow" is good, but frankly too long on not enough of a song in the first place, slices out all the parts that made the original interesting (the bits where Moby plays the instruments), steals vocal slices, and creates a brand new track - I hesitate to call it a 'song' - that is both varied in tempo and style but also appears to have been successfully tested on humans for irritancy. Not all the remixes are this tedious. In fact, overall, most are, if you enjoy the genre of occasionally generic dance music remixes, at best, interesting and pleasing reinterpretations that add and enhance the original with some success. There's plenty of good stuff here let down by the odd poor choice that has a few bars too many, starts to bore, and isn't really designed to actually be listened to rather than have you jump around like a spider dying from a lethal overdose of caffeine.
One of the great pitfalls of any remix is that they are not designed to be listened to, but often danced to. Which makes the environment of home listening a strange experience. It's almost musical porn : listening to someone else enjoy themselves. It reminds me of something that it isn't, and whilst this release is a cheap, and effective way to increase the mileage of the original album, as well as creating a quick and easy method of pushing out a bunch of remixes, it isn't entirely successful artistically as it creates an impression of quantity over quality and lacks the sense of flow and light and shade that subtracts from an effective listening experience should have as all the songs become an interchangable barrage of similar styles and tempos without any clear conclusion. By all means, pick it up and enjoy it greatly, but expect no revelations, no great joy, no stunningly original reinterpretations or absolutely unforgettable moments of euphoria. It's a selection of above-average remixes at a good price, and that's good enough for what it is.
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