A Bit More Detail

Right now, my favourite remixer is Jacques Lu Cont, one of the brand names of British producer Stuart Price. Price has consistently done a fantastic job of taking songs by any number of musicians--Coldplay and Madonna and Gwen Stefani and the Killers and Depeche Mode--and remixing them superbly, throwing in fantastic 80s-style synthpop while remaining true to the song. He has even made me like Coldplay. The YouTube video for the Thin White Duke remix of "Vida la Vida" is below.

"A ride on the Spadina subway extension" (Watch on YouTube)

This YouTube playlist includes 33 videos of songs he's remixed. It makes wonderful music to write to.

Even though I've been personally familiar with the remix since 2000, when I began downloading Eurythmics and Garbage remixes by the gigabyte, it's only since the advent of YouTube, with its fan remixes and official remixes put to one official video or a fan video or just a simple graphic, that I've really begun to hear a huge number of remixes of songs by any number of groups. I like this, not only on its own terms (so much new music!) but because it lends new scope for creativity, allowing different people who might otherwise have experimented and not seen their experiments propagate very far to achieve a global audience. The remix is perfect for our late modern era, really, the product of a bricolage culture that certainly seems likely to continue. The two meet, and combine, to produce an era that I like quite a lot.

bricolage culture

Again idly surfing YouTube this Tuesday just past, I decided to look for some Depeche Mode to play in the background. Their 1990 international hit single "Enjoy the Silence" appealed to me particularly, and so I looked and found the below video.



This video, shot at the filmed at the Top of the World observatory on top of the South Tower, was apparently created in 1990 for French television.

I look at the video and wonder at the almost unbelievably low railings and the immense heights that erase entire neighbourhoods.