The Remixes 2004-2011

Album Review

An award-winning DJ, record label owner, and recording artist in his own right, Hamburg producer Alexander Ridha, aka Boys Noize, is arguably just as renowned for his remixing work, with everyone from film director David Lynch to synth pop pioneers Depeche Mode having requested his services over the past seven years. Rounding up 24 of his most popular reworkings, The Remixes 2004-2011 shows why he's become so in-demand. Several tracks are unrecognizable and for the most part improved by his radical floor-filling treatments, whether it's Kaiser Chiefs' rowdy indie pop anthem "Everyday I Love You Less and Less," now a stuttering slice of electroclash packed with distorted helium-style vocals and twisted bleeps, his transformation of Feist's pounding folk-pop single "My Moon My Man" into a slow-building robotic vocal house anthem, or his sinister acidic electro take on Marilyn Manson's gothic rock ballad "Putting Holes in Happiness." But unlike many of his cut-and-paste counterparts, Ridha also knows when to hold back, opting for subtle tinkering rather than a sledgehammer approach on the likes of Maurice's Chicago house classic "This Is Acid," the trippy disco-pop of Scissor Sisters' "Invisible Light," and the lush chillout electronica of Sébastien Tellier's "L'Amour et la Violence." A few remixes, such as Cut Copy's "Lights & Music" and N.E.R.D.'s "Hot-n-Fun," veer into generic four-to-the-floor territory, while at the other end of the scale, the machine-gun effects and squelchy wobble basslines on Para One's "Dundun-Dun" are virtually unlistenable. But for fans of progressive electro, The Remixes 2004-2011 is pretty much an essential collection from one of the genre's most consistent and well-respected names. ~ Jon O'Brien, Rovi