Following the deserved attention of their great album Tiny Reminders, Two Lone Swordsman followed last year with the obligatory remix collection. Credit is due for avoiding calling on a diverse cast, mostly of relative unknowns, who take liberties with the source material. Some tracks here incorporate guitar and vocals, while others push the neo-electro of Tiny Reminders into hardcore glitch territory, and there's a lot of room between those two poles.
Four tracks in particular stand out from the rest of Further Reminders because they take a small dollop of the original album and place it in a traditional instrumental setting, essentially creating a new song with faint echoes of Two Lone Swordsman intact. Two separate versions of "Tiny Reminder No. 1" by C-Pij (isn't this a label and not a band?) start and end the record. The first take assembles the digital gurgles of the original track, while C-Pij add a fingerpicked acoustic guitar, organ, and assorted keyboards to create a moving little track that almost seems like latter-era Swans. The track is enhanced further on the C-Pij "vocal mix" that closes the album, as the same instrumental backing is used behind a singer who sounds a bit like Hope Sandoval.
Morr Music faves Lali Puna take "It's Not the Worst I've Looked... Just the Most I've Ever Cared" (a track that was pretty close to rock in its original incarnation), dress it up with vocals and some ghostly organ drones, and manage to improve the track immensely. Calexico's remix of "Tiny Reminder No. 3" takes the low-level static of the original and weaves it into a new composition in their usual style, with a muted trumpet, some nylon-stringed guitars, and loose drumming. Though the attempt at fusion is commendable, the result sounds half-assed, like Calexico merely dubbed part of the song into a pre-rehearsal warm-up jam.
Once you get past the band tracks, which are a mixed bag but nonetheless all a bit unusual, the rest of Tiny Reminders feels very familiar. As is often the case on remix records, one of the highlights turns out to be by the artists themselves. This Two Lone Swordsman version of "Rotting Hill Carnival" is a clever inversion of the peppy original, moving the focus away from the busy snares to the bottom end and transforming the electro-pop sheen into bare-bones techno. Cause takes an even more floor-friendly approach to the track, adding some house spicing to the skeletal sources. My favorite of the more standard electronic remixes is the Dry & Heavy remix of "Neuflex," which also happened to be my favorite track on Tiny Reminders. The slow reggae rhythm has a stiff but earnest gait that reminds me of Ras Command, and the dub processing of the original's unforgettable sequencer riff blends nicely into this spliffed-out space.
But even as remix records go, Further Reminders is a bit of a disappointment. Part of it could have to do with just how much I enjoyed both the tracks and the sequencing of the original release. Hearing them picked apart and haphazardly scattered like this is disconcerting. But the real problem is that there are so few standouts. Serious fans will need Further Reminders, of course, but more casual listeners would be better served by a deeper dig into the Two Lone Swordsman back catalog.
