Good Weather For Airstrikes

So the Good Weather For Airstrikes Best of 2005-fest has descended upon us, and things are going to get pretty crazy around here. Rather than the logical assumption that since tomorrow is Christmas posts would fall off for a day or two so Everett and I can get some quality family time, the opposite is in fact true, as I will be using “working on my website” as an excuse to spend less time with my parents, and I’m sure Everett will be doing the same (though I may be wrong, it’s conceivable that not everyone has a family as dysfunctional as the Davies/Williams crew). Anyway, kicking things off was Everett’s “Top 10 Underrated Albums of 2005″ (see the post below), and then below are our “Top 10 Remixes of 2005″, followed closely by Everett’s “13 Albums I Shouldn’t Like But I Do”, and “20 Albums I Didn’t Listen To Enough That Would Make My Best-Of List If I Did” posts, which will be up shortly. Thus you should expect a flurry of updates in the coming days, carrying over into early January and leading up to Evro and I’s individual Best Albums of 2005 posts. So yeah, allow your anticipation to mount and whatnot.

But on to the main event of this post, The Top 10 Remixes of 2005. 2005 was an incredible year for the remix (”Congratulations remixes, you’re having the best year ever!”), as not only did it see countless hot new interpretations of already-hot jams, it also saw to certified awesome remix album’s, Silent Alarm: Remixed (of Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm) and Guerolito (of Beck’s Guero), and one less awesome one, Romance Bloody Romance (of Death From Above 1979’s You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine). Speaking of DFA1979, 2005 also saw one of my favorite remixers, MSTRKRFT, which is made up of one half of DFA’79 (James Keeler) as well as Girls Are Short’s Al-P. MSTRKRFT dropped some particularly hot remixes this year, re-interpreting Annie, DFA1979 (obviously), The Kills, Metric, and many more, but their best work was easily on Bloc Party’s “Two More Years” (see below for more). In fact, it seemed like most remixers really brought their A-game when it came to remixing Bloc Party, as five of our top ten remixes of the year are of Bloc Party songs. However, I’ll save the overanalysis for the individual song writeups.

10. “Chicago” (Jongalloways’ To String Remix) - Sufjan Stevens
EVERETT: If you are of the opinion that “boop-blip” is the new “strum-strum”, this remix is for you. Jongalloway removes everything but Sufjan’s beautiful vocals and builds a backing track from scratch, and one that surprisingly complements Sufjan’s voice quite well. Though this track doesn’t begin to approach the beauty of the original, its definitely an interesting take on one of the year’s best songs.

9. “Helicopter” (Allen’s Breakneck Mix) - Bloc Party
DEREK: Out of nowhere, Portugese DJ “Allen” hit unsuspecting Bloc Party fans with two of the year’s hotter remix, both for Bloc Party’s stand out single “Helicopter”. This one, the “weaker” of the two, stays truer to the original’s frantic, upbeat pace, and is the more club-friendly of the two. However, Allen doesn’t just rehash the original track, rather he speeds the percussion up to hyperspeeds, and in an awesome turn of events, even adds handclaps! Though not quite as good as his Santa Monica Mix (see #7, below), the aptly-named Breakneck Mix is definitely still certified hot.

8. “What Else Is There?” (Trentemoller Remix) - Royksopp
DEREK: This is a true gem of remix, in that it’s got distinct sections, and each part is catcheier and even more entertaining than the last. Anders Trentemoller gets things starter with a simple tecno “boom-bip” beat, eventually surrouned by atmospheric synths, and then moves everything to the back of the mix to highlight Karin Dreifer’s stunning vocals, before bringing the piercing boom-bips back in for the kill, this time accompanying them by a disco beat. Each subsequent verse sees Trentemoller adding new elements of percussion, until everything fades away to those atmospheric synths again, at which point he brings in the simple strumming of an acoustic guitar to accompany Dreifer’s vocals. Finally, in the last quarter of the track, Trentemoller reminds you that this is in fact a techno remix and he turns the strobes backs on, hits you with the percussion, and cuts up the vocals climaxing in a glorious finale before fading out just as discreetly as he came.

7. “Helicopter” (Allen’s Santa Monica Mix) -Bloc Party
DEREK: In the second (and better) of his two “Helicopter” remix, Allen does just the opposite of the Breakneck Mix, slowing everything down to a decidedly relax, more chill pace. Appropriately titled the “Santa Monica” Mix, Allen strips away the frantic, urgent guitars, and replaces them with surprisingly agreeable acoustic guitars. The original track was the kind of song you listened to as you drove 100 miles per hour on the freeway weaving in and out of cars to avoid the police (not that I’ve ever done that, mind you). However, in the remix Allen manages to pull a complete 180 and turn it into the kind of song you listen to as you cruise down Sunset Boulevard with the top down as palm trees drift by on either side, a feat definitely worthy of inclusion in the company of the year’s finest remixes.

6. “The Pioneers” (M83 Remix) - Bloc Party
EVERETT: A remix is supposed to reinvent the original song, and in my opinion no song on Silent Alarm was reinvented better then “Pioneers” was by M83. The track takes one small aspect of the song, a single syllable, and loops it over and over, though its not until over a minute in to the song that you realize the origin of the noise. That moment, about 1:47 in to the song, is one of my favorite musical instants of 2005. The original track was frantic and paranoid, and M83’s reinvention perfectly mixes lyrical optimism with sonic foreboding in to a truly memorable remix in the truest sense of the word.

5. “Heaven Hammer” (Air’s “Missing” Remix) - Beck
EVERETT: The French electronica-lounge duo slow down the track and showcase Beck’s voice rising above a mellow backdrop of strings and lightly pounding percussion. The strength of Beck’s vocals on the track is astonishing; it’s power was lost in the jangling Guero original. Basically, “Heaven Hammer” is the one remix I’ve heard this year that has most vastly improved on the original, and no Beck original tune is poor to begin with. Air did a fantastic job with this remix, and it definitely warrants a spot in the top five of the year.

4. “Two More Years” (MSTRKRFT Remix) - Bloc Party
DEREK: Remixing duo MSTRKRFT drop one of the hottest, most danceable mixes of the year on us with their “Two More Years” remix, offering a completely new, danceable take on the original. MSTRKRFT takes the morose, Joy Division-esque stylings of the original, transplants a dirty, DFA1979-signature guitar riff and a disco beat over it, and voila, welcome to the party. An added bonus are Kele’s new lyrics (”And we cover our lies with handshakes and smiles…”), cut from the original (at least on all the versions I have), which sum up the complacency of a generation and are some of Bloc Party’s finest to date.

3. “Hounds of Love” (Phones’ Wolves At The Door Mix) - The Futureheads
DEREK: Phones (the remixing stage name of UK- producer Paul Epworth) drops his hottest remix since his “Banquet” disco edit, isolating Le Futureheads’ a capella yelps and then surrounding them by synthesizer squiggles, computer glitches, and all around techno-pop glory. After the extended (one minute) “oh, oh-oh” intro, when the “oh-whoa-oh” finally drops you know you’re in for a treat, and Phones doesn’t dissappoint, re-inventing the original into a dance-floor masterpiece. I’m consistently tempted to say this eclipses the original, but then I remember how blissfully flawless it was and just can’t bring myself to pull the trigger and say it. If anyone else has anything by Phones (I just have this and his “Banquet” remix) and would like to share, or at the very least knows where I can find a list of his complete remixing history, I’d be endlessly appreciative.

1b. “Diamonds From Sierra Leone” (Remix ft. Jay-Z) - Kanye West
EVERETT: Kanye’s original Diamonds from Sierra Leone was a good track, featuring the usual Kanye West braggadocio and the even more common Kanye West bitching. Analysis of the lyrics leads one to the obvious conclusion that Mr. West basically made a song about how he didn’t win Grammies and he should have. Jay-Z sees through the bullshit and absolutely hijacks the track on the far superior Diamonds (Remix), dropping one-liners like it’s his job (oh wait, it is). Lines like “had to get off the boat so I could walk on water” and “this ain’t no tall order, this is nothin’ to me / difficult takes a day, impossible takes a week” give way to more frantic rhymes about his struggle to build his rap dynasty, and he ends by bequeathing the rap throne to Kanye. This passing of the torch, similar to when Notorious B.I.G. did the same for Jay on his debut, Reasonable Doubt, is the true power behind the remix: a shift in power atop the rap world, and something tells me Kanye is not about to lose his title as the King of commercial hip-hop. If this weren’t technically Derek’s post I’d make this the undisputed number one in a second.

1a. “Blue Light” (Engineers’ Anti-Gravity Mix) - Bloc Party
DEREK: Now that Everett got his discension out of the way, on to the real number one remix of the year. The premier track from Silent Alarm: Remixed stands alone as the gold standard for remixes, as not only does this remix eclipse the (very good) original, it’s an incredible song in its own right. A testament to this is the fact that not only does it sit victoriously atop the rest of the remixes this year, it also finds a place in the upper tier of my top songs of the year (to be posted in the coming days/week). This is Engineers’ crowning accomplishment as a band so far (as fortunate or unfortunate as that may be for them), and they do an incredible job reinventing the original. Rather than the traditional “take-a-good-song-and-make-it-danceable” remixing approach, Engineers’ strip down the song, remove the guitars, add some atmospheric synths, and put a beautiful xylophone line over everything, thus rendering the “anti-gravity” title perfectly appropriate for the song. When all the instruments fade away at the end of the song and all were left with is that pristine xylophone line, nothing else matters for a few fleeting seconds.

So after the inner-site discension about what this year’s best remix was, what do you think. Is it Jay’s passing of the torch to ‘Ye on “Diamonds”, or Engineers’ flawless reinvention of an already near-perfect Bloc Party track? Or conversely, if you have a fantastic remix you think we overlooked (which is highly conceivable considering the frequent scarcity of b-side only remixes), tell us. Discuss/share in the comments (or make me look lame and don’t).

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