The idea of the remix album is not new.
Though they have been around since the late '70s, they only began to garner mainstream attention in the mid-'90s, and since then remix releases have been embraced as two-way marketing tools. Artists and labels alike have used them to get extra mileage out of a particular album (see: remixes of Nine Inch Nails) and/or generate interest in an array of musical brands (see: URBal Beats).
But now that albums have been disaggregated, the concept of a remix album seems especially outdated. It's hard enough to convince someone to download an album of original material, but when a release consists of the same few tracks reworked by random producers, it minimizes the significance of everybody's contribution: the remixing producer for being part of an inconsequential release, the release itself for having a weak identity, and the parent songs have one more distracting iteration.
In other words, remix albums are a bad idea. Unless you actually something cohesive by doing the following things:
Keep it Short We're New Here, an album-length repurposing of Gil Scott-Heron's I'm New Here by the xx's Jamie Smith, places Scott-Heron's ravaged voice in sleek, colorful, spacious display cases. Positioning Scott-Heron as a ghostly elder floating through modern compositions is a bold move, but We're New Here, at just 36 minutes, gets in and gets out. Smith only uses a few of I'm New Here's songs, and he uses them so carefully that you can hear the impact of Scott-Heron's every word on the compositions that surround them.
Like all great concepts, the Grey Album is easy to explain.
Give it a Strong Concept The Grey Album is arguably the most famous remix album of all time. It holds that title for a variety of reasons, but one of the main reasons is that it can be explained quickly, clearly and concisely. The same goes for the Kleptones' A Night at the Hip Hopera (Queenplus hip hop!), Large Professor's No Protection (Large Pro's remix of Massive Attack's Protection) or Burial's long-awaited remix of Massive Attack's Heligoland. Each of these is subtly different, but the common denominator running through them all is that they can each be explained in a single sentence.
Get Something Back Looking over the above examples, you've probably noted that remix albums tend to fall into one of two categories: major-label collaborations, or not-so-legitimate quasi-piracy. In the latter cases, the producers weren't stupid enough to charge money for their work, but many of them, including the Kleptones, failed to get anything out of their fans. Tom Caruana, the man behind Tea Sea Records and Okayplayer: The Bollywood Remake, offers several unoffical remix albums on his website, but he requires you to register to access everything. That e-mail address, as many marketers will tell you, is worth a great deal, and certainly a worthy return on some remix work.
Though they have been around since the late '70s, they only began to garner mainstream attention in the mid-'90s, and since then remix releases have been embraced as two-way marketing tools. Artists and labels alike have used them to get extra mileage out of a particular album (see: remixes of Nine Inch Nails) and/or generate interest in an array of musical brands (see: URBal Beats).
But now that albums have been disaggregated, the concept of a remix album seems especially outdated. It's hard enough to convince someone to download an album of original material, but when a release consists of the same few tracks reworked by random producers, it minimizes the significance of everybody's contribution: the remixing producer for being part of an inconsequential release, the release itself for having a weak identity, and the parent songs have one more distracting iteration.
In other words, remix albums are a bad idea. Unless you actually something cohesive by doing the following things:
Keep it Short We're New Here, an album-length repurposing of Gil Scott-Heron's I'm New Here by the xx's Jamie Smith, places Scott-Heron's ravaged voice in sleek, colorful, spacious display cases. Positioning Scott-Heron as a ghostly elder floating through modern compositions is a bold move, but We're New Here, at just 36 minutes, gets in and gets out. Smith only uses a few of I'm New Here's songs, and he uses them so carefully that you can hear the impact of Scott-Heron's every word on the compositions that surround them.
Like all great concepts, the Grey Album is easy to explain.
Give it a Strong Concept The Grey Album is arguably the most famous remix album of all time. It holds that title for a variety of reasons, but one of the main reasons is that it can be explained quickly, clearly and concisely. The same goes for the Kleptones' A Night at the Hip Hopera (Queenplus hip hop!), Large Professor's No Protection (Large Pro's remix of Massive Attack's Protection) or Burial's long-awaited remix of Massive Attack's Heligoland. Each of these is subtly different, but the common denominator running through them all is that they can each be explained in a single sentence.
Get Something Back Looking over the above examples, you've probably noted that remix albums tend to fall into one of two categories: major-label collaborations, or not-so-legitimate quasi-piracy. In the latter cases, the producers weren't stupid enough to charge money for their work, but many of them, including the Kleptones, failed to get anything out of their fans. Tom Caruana, the man behind Tea Sea Records and Okayplayer: The Bollywood Remake, offers several unoffical remix albums on his website, but he requires you to register to access everything. That e-mail address, as many marketers will tell you, is worth a great deal, and certainly a worthy return on some remix work.
