The High Llamas
Lollo Rosso (Remix EP) (V2)
by Nik Rainey
Okay, I’ll pose the question if the rest of you are too lame to raise your hands: What in the holy name of St. Egregious is the point of these remix albums?!? It’s pretty much a common consensus that there’s just far too much music out there to begin with these days to even acknowledge, much less digest; and yet we, as a consumer body that votes with our dollar ($2.75 in Canada), still abide by such diarrheal concepts as the “music inspired by” movie soundtrack, the 8-CD Death Metal Tribute to Loggins & Messina box set, the prospect of any future Matchbox 20 album, and the remix collection. Is the world somehow enhanced or drawn closer to some blessed utopian ideal by the Butyl Nitrate Triplets’ sixteen different takes on the collected CV of Golden Earring, extended, phased, flanged, and refracted off the tongs of an amplified speculum in a special gold collector’s case that blinds small children when you hold it up to the light? I consulted the works of both Sir Thomas More and Chuck Eddy and the answer, clearly, is no. Exceptions can be made, of course. If it’s dance music, and therefore constructed less for at-home listening than for either flailing all available dangling and/or bobbling body parts or slouching paisley-eyed in a puddle of stuporous parti-colored sputum in a badly-ventilated warehouse mere days away from demolition, layers of Karo-thick reverb, reverse subliminal heavy breathing and epileptic drum machine overdubs often enhance that which was not terribly substantive to begin with. And if you’re somebody like Trent Reznor, who only writes a song every three years or so, it may be in your best interest to pule out some product with your name attached a couple of times a year lest they rescind your Tortured Genius Grant or something. In neither case are they necessary, but at least they’re understandable. But understanding why the likes of Sean O’Hagan, whose High Llamas have already doled out a fairly unconscionable amount of Brian Wilsonated musical abstracts over the last couple of years, feels the need to lend out his masters to a few acquaintances for a quick rethink is rather beyond my ken. (My Howie refused to comment.)
Still, you can’t fault his taste in aural refurbishers: Mouse on Mars, Cornelius, Jim O’Rourke, Schneider TM, Stock, Hausen & Walkman, and Kid Loco are all top-notch studio moles, a position in the real world roughly analogous to a really talented professional haikuist, but worthy of a certain kind of scaled-down respect nevertheless, and while it may seem odd that a style of music as unsuitable for dancing (even the Quaalude Shuffle) as the Llamas’ should be run through anybody’s high-tech wringer, it makes for a productive tension between pastoral pop la-de-da and electromagnetized yada-yada-yuda-yada. Or perhaps it’s just another prime example of the logrolling incestuousness of the whole insular community (O’Hagan has worked for or with practically every artist on this roster) that produces such malformed but not unattractive inbreds as this. No matter: if you’re an obsessive fan of one or more of the artists cited above, or your job title consists of two letters and requires you wear plastic Japanese rain gear and sunglasses in dark, cavernous rooms, you should enjoy this agreeable exercise in pointlessness. The rest of us: wave politely, no flash photography, and keep your fingers away from their mouths.
(14 East 4th St. 3rd Floor New York, NY 10012)
