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Oceanic Remixes / Reinterpretations

Isis
Oceanic Remixes/Reinterpretations

[Hydra Head; 2005]

6.2

Find it at: Insound | eMusic | Lala

To heavy metal purists, Isis are essentially already a remix. Their disgorged sounds feel roughly metal, but there's something else coursing through and fucking with the template: Check out the buried vocals, the guitars stacked like whirlpools, the elastic bridges that give and take without proper crescendos, and just the general hybridization via all those shoegaze elements.

On Oceanic Remixes / Reinterpretations, the Los Angeles-by-way-of-Boston quintet fill two CDs with composers, rockers, and knob-turners twiddling with and reforming their 2002 full-length, Oceanic. Originally a series of 12" singles this compilation gathers the entire run, including a varied cast from Atomsmasher/Khanate dude James Plotkin (who turns-in a lovely, dank "The Other") to the Oktopus from Dälek (who opens an Atari 2600 Pandora's Box on "False Light"). As would be expected, if you like Isis you won't necessary like this album, and vice versa.

Remixes are tricky. No matter who's providing source material, questions inevitably arise amongst some listeners: Can the remix stand by itself? Or is the value of the material in seeing how sources are rearranged into endless permutations? I'm of the thought that the originals don't much matter-- I imagine these echoes and drones as new formations and see if they float. So there have been times I've liked the rewrites more than the originals. More often, in spite of myself, I listen to the second drafts and consider why this or that interpreter went one way or the other, still considering it in tandem with the starter material.

Here, most of the tracks I enjoyed plucked a single thread from the original and found a way to weave it into a new nest elsewhere. Christian Fennesz's implosion of "Weight" transforms the track into a weightless homunculus. (It sounds like a teeming, contoured, elegant Fennesz song.) Tim Hecker's "Carry" tosses various textual shifts over a fluctuating bed of drone; tiny percussive ripples glitch out at the end. Some find new corners and angles left open for invasion and then tearing the original blueprint apart: Mike Patton, whose Ipecac label released Oceanic as well as its successor, Panopticon, transforms "Maritime" into a gypsy's quake-basket circus romp hosted by crotchety Mr. Bungle beside a plastic kiddie pool.

On the other hand, there are too many un-intriguing instances like Venetian Snares' "The Beginning and the End" and DJ Speedranch's "Carry: Like I Will Love Her Forever?" (Fuckin Die!!!)," which come off like slightly fractured alterna-metal. Other mixes dull: Aaron Turner's vocals are usually buried, so a few decide to make them resurface super upfront. And it's here that I imagine Isis sounds most like the haters want them to: flat, fairly generic, and totally not mysterious.

The one participant to up ante is JK Broadrick of Jesu and Godflesh. Yoking delay and echo to "Hym", he extends the track by over five minutes and appends unforeseen movements. The general opening triumph remains largely in tact, but he dampens the drums, doubles certain passages, equalizes, and transforms it into a loping choral dervish. Then, pulling out the rug, he removes space between the drum hits, warping crescendos into a frantic seasick sluice. Later-- because the track warrants notations of the passage of time-- the vocals turn especially raw bloody. (Vocals sprout where they didn't exist in the original.) The final few minutes build a raft of harmonic acoustics that float placidly alongside a vocal drift.

The author John Barth wrote a piece once about how a writer should avoid using epigraphs that are better written than the book they precede. This in mind, the Isis curators wisely stick Broadrick's "Hym" in the final slot of Disc Two. If it came earlier, everything in it's wake would seem lame and mundane. As is, the coda adds a bit of last-minute revelation.

I guess that's another reason folks remix rock records: By rescuing even a single element previously buried or turning down something upfront, you fuck with the song's hierarchy and allow the shock of the new to slip right on in. It's like remaking a memory.

— Brandon Stosuy, June 19, 2005


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