Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Ruby: Altered and Proud: The Short-Staffed Remix

181

Ruby: Altered and Proud: The Short-Staffed Remix

By

View read count
Ruby: Altered and Proud: The Short-Staffed Remix
Tucked in amongst beats and textures, Ruby calls out, "Play with me!" And indeed that's what eleven different knob-twiddlers have done with Ruby's previous release, Short-Staffed at the Gene Pool.

Short-Staffed overflowed with upbeat textures and honeyed vocal hooks—ideal fodder to feed the machine. Altered and Proud ends up a tidy operation with a generous helping of styles, from retro to futuristic, from carefully arranged to chaotically deranged.

The highlights:

Kid 606 defies all categorization with his most righteous trip to the (mental) hospital on "Lilypad." Declaring Jihad on convention, this piece shimmers with erratic high-end detail and sliced-up melody phrases. After a brief trip through manic drum-n-bass, things gradually settle down into a sparse, reverberant (almost psychedelic) refrain: "Sing for me." And then the piece fades off into peace. It might sound odd, but it works. Or you can take five minutes and go retro with Bench's Afro-and-bellbottoms remix of "Lamplight," which does not hesitate to dig long, deep grooves. Get up off your chair, shake down the polyester, and get busy with your booty. Then zip ahead to the mirror ball and wicka-wack guitar on the Schneider TM remix of "Grace," which delicately insists that the past is the future.

Perhaps the most creative and coherent track on this record is the Wauvenfold remix of "Beefheart." Constant reminders to "Play with me" frame themselves between hesitant, shifting beats. Meanwhile, all manner of digital weirdness distorts, fragments, and deconstructs the sing-song vocals of the original. With just the right balance between vision and memory, this cut remains the finest on the record.

The downside: Unfortunately, the ever-dull abyss of House music makes its appearance twice on this record, and there's no evidence here to contradict the rule that plodding beats make for plodding music. You can just hit the fast forward to avoid these two tracks; they add very little to a disc that otherwise has much to offer.

As a showcase for some of the more creative forces on the electronic music scene, Altered and Proud does a fine job. Whatever your craving, you'll probably find something here to satisfy it. And Ruby is definitely a fruit ripe for the picking, to paraphrase Rankine. Glad to see they ripped it from the tree.

Track Listing

Beefheart (Dot Allison Remix); Lilypad (Take Me to the Hospital I Am Not A Fucking Frog Remix) by Kid 606; Lamplight (Bench and Doufus Parrrtay Mix1 by Bench); Queen of Denial (Captain Audio Remix); Waterside (Deep In The Void Mix by Aksum); Grace (Space Remix by Schneider TM); Beefheart (Wauvenfold Remix); Sweet is (Loop Of The Fruit Remix by Console); Waterside (Scotty Remix); Lilypad (Max Tundra Remix); Grace (Her Space Holiday Remix).

Personnel

Ruby
vocals

Album information

Title: Altered and Proud: The Short-Staffed Remix | Year Released: 2001 | Record Label: Thirsty Ear Recordings

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.