Strawberry Hotel - Dirty reviews

[dubman]

Originally Posted by aphasein

IDK, I think the genie has been out of the bottle for a while now on remaking music - with it mainly being a digital form now for most of the audience, the democratization and easy availability of digital editing tools, and internet culture being what it is, it's definitely going to happen and often more extremely. The good news is it's generally done by passionate fans who are engaged and excited by the work (that's who is going to put in the effort and want to share it), but I also get the questionable nature and ambiguity of it.

I also see it as an extension of mixtape/playlists/DJ-culture (which Underworld is a huge part of), with DJ's making their own edits/selections/remixes. Autechre famously started out in the 80's by making pause-button edits at home to "tighten-up" (as they said) their favorite tracks to play to friends, which led to deeper remixing, then inserting their own compositions in their mixtapes and later DJ sets. The electro culture lent itself to this, but it also just happened anyway by people finding their own means and stepping up. Autechre are about to drop a new collection of live sets in place of an album (their words) and some fans will soon be chopping them up and enjoying that as well.

I know for myself it's something I really enjoy both the process of and end results of, and is something I probably can't turn off easily. I don't really consider myself a musician, but as a music producer I've done a ton of editing of my friends' work and collaborate mainly by suggesting or physically making edits (and I have written a few albums worth of tracks solo, but they've still mainly felt like editing as well). I'm a creative director in my day job, so spend the day recommending, deciding or physically making edits to other designer's work. And as an avid collector, I really love curation, which sometimes extends beyond the initial object into related items, and making decisions about fit and relevancy.

I think I have probably remade about 1/4 of my favorite albums, generally just dropping tracks, re-sequencing for better flow, and/or occasionally pulling in b-sides from same sessions to replace tracks when seems to fit better. Already re-sequenced the new Pixies album which also dropped yesterday to give it more energy upfront (and does our loose cultural/narrative preference for energy to kick things off and quiet/beautiful/slower endings stem actually from the limitations of vinyl, which preferred denser more bombastic songs physically be placed first and quiet songs last on the more limited inner bands, or is it more inherently intrinsic?) Is the album version definitive or the single edit that more people will probably hear and know? Or the live version that gets refined and settles more into itself sometimes from the comparatively early on album one?

I don't participate in any other online communities, so please forgive the occasional diatribes, but obviously something important to me that I care and think a lot about. I have totally redone Drift as I shared here, but other than that, for the albums, I've only adjusted Barking by replacing Diamond Jigsaw with Downpipe and dropping Louisiana (which really makes the whole thing quite a stomper). I've been there for every new release since Second Toughest and love the surprises (and still love most of SH), but I'd be lying if I didn't take stock of it feeling and fitting oddly different this time. IDK, still very exciting overall.

I feel like we're talking about different things if we're comparing this to DJ edits and remixes. those embrace the original and rearrange the furniture so that it'll fit a set, or reveal its compatibility to other genres.

I'm also not saying that rearranging or cherry-picking tracks is off-base. I have playlist folders for bands like Underworld that constantly de&re-contextualize and build a vision of an era as I understand & love it. I hate certain tracks like Boy, Boy, Boy, but I never thought to fuck with it to make it fit. I just ignore it. They can't all be winners.

What's going on here is taking ones antipathy to a track and making it more digestible. It doesn't even try to get inside of it, it doesn't respect it with the time it deserves, it just rejects the difficulty and starts aligning it with what we're comfortable with. it's depressing, a waste of dialogue, and frankly embarrassing that we get more inflexible with age than the band themselves.

[aphasein]

Originally Posted by dubman

I feel like we're talking about different things if we're comparing this to DJ edits and remixes. those embrace the original and rearrange the furniture so that it'll fit a set, or reveal its compatibility to other genres.

I'm also not saying that rearranging or cherry-picking tracks is off-base. I have playlist folders for bands like Underworld that constantly de&re-contextualize and build a vision of an era as I understand & love it. I hate certain tracks like Boy, Boy, Boy, but I never thought to fuck with it to make it fit. I just ignore it. They can't all be winners.

What's going on here is taking ones antipathy to a track and making it more digestible. It doesn't even try to get inside of it, it doesn't respect it with the time it deserves, it just rejects the difficulty and starts aligning it with what we're comfortable with. it's depressing, a waste of dialogue, and frankly embarrassing that we get more inflexible with age than the band themselves.

I get it, but think we're mainly talking about things differently here than talking about different things, and have a different degree of comfort with them, and I'd say, with real respect, that inflexibility can go both ways.

As mentioned, I've never actually done this for UW before and have done it because I'm engaged in the work, and don't want to ignore or drop it because I don't hate it, I actually deeply like it apart from specific elements that make it suddenly lose momentum and drop me out of the spell it's cast.

In the case of Lewis, the vocal runs are kind of integral to the drop-out sections though, and I still hear them in my head, as I figured, so have gone back to the original track. Love the cut-up processing they do on the third refrain of it, which doesn't dominate or feel like it goes on too long like the full raw vocal. Still think Iron Bones is stronger without the processed third vocal refrain and feels more like a single edit with the ending trimmed a little shorter. Funny that they both have a structure of 3 vocal refrains with the third one heavily processed and causing opposite reactions for me.

So why share this? I'm mainly DJing for an audience of one (which I'd say dropping and re-arranging tracks also is), but like Autechre sharing their edits with friends of songs recorded off the radio they tightened up, it seemed like a partially receptive audience here, with others mentioning their issues with the vocal runs in Lewis and album overall hitting them strange, but loving many parts of it. We're obviously all passionate about it.

...

One thing I haven't really seen mentioned much yet, and maybe better to focus on, is how hard a lot of the tracks go - haven't felt that in a long time actually (mainly Border Country recently). Denver Luna, Colour Red, Sweet Lands, Hilo Sky are all fairly intense with Hilo up there with Dirty Epic and Beautiful Burnout. Even Techno Shinkansen and Lewis go there in their builds (especially Lewis in the end third, that was quite a surprise after it's smooth groove). Nothing Moaner or Push Upstairs level of course, but still, impressive.

[dubman]

Originally Posted by aphasein

As mentioned, I've never actually done this for UW before and have done it because I'm engaged in the work, and don't want to ignore or drop it because I don't hate it, I actually deeply like it apart from specific elements that make it suddenly lose momentum and drop me out of the spell it's cast.

this doesn't sound like engagement though, it sounds like molding underworld because you don't like what they've done. That sounds like recoiling from any true engagement.