Missing Deadlines : Selected Remixes

Album Review

Remix collections in general function both as explorations of styles and as de facto collaborative efforts — depending, at least, on how the remixer chooses to work with the source material. Given Ulrich Schnauss' reputation as a creator of electro-gaze music, it's little surprise that so many of the featured artists are shoegazers old and new: Mark Gardener of Ride turns up solo, while Slowdive is invoked not once but twice, thanks to the appearance both of Mojave 3 and Rachel Goswell solo. Add in plenty of newer artists beholden to the form like A Sunny Day in Glasgow, Mahogany, Asobi Seksu, and Missing Deadlines is, in essence, one long series of reverb-overdriven washes of sound after another. But it's not that Schnauss flattens everything out song for song; if he's emphasizing the echo and enveloping nature of the music whenever possible, the original songs themselves are rarely entirely jettisoned. Thus A Sunny Day in Glasgow's "Ghost in the Graveyard" still rips along at a quick pace, while Asobi Seksu's "Strawberries" becomes even more of a beauteous chug and flow. Elsewhere, the soft jangle of Katharina Franck's "Faithful Friend" becomes a ghostly keen of vocals and guitar lost in a loping swirl, while the pulsing synth flow of Roedelius and Tim Story's "Lunz" turns into elegant sonic gauze, and I'm Not a Gun's "Make Sense and Loose" stands out for being not merely drum-driven, but for the swathes of murk used to shade rather than shape it. Missing Deadlines doesn't include every remix Schnauss has done — his majestic reworking of Depeche Mode's "Little 15," also one of his most creative remixes, is absent — but it's still an enjoyable sampling and, in a way, is his most varied full-length release yet.