From an established indie band's point of view, the remix collection's promotional use-value is undeniable. Tracks are cheap and easy to compile, and sometimes you end up with a really fabulous mix or two. But even the turkeys are guaranteed to make blog rounds on the synergistic strength of your and your celebrity remixers' names-- thus extending the limited buzz-life of original material. So does Who Designs Nature's How mean Bell Orchestre is a real band and not just an Arcade Fire side project? Hold the emails; it's a rhetorical question. Still, you have to wonder what Richard Reed Parry, Sarah Neufeld, and the part-timing Luyas intended with this perfectly pleasant but hardly revelatory remix EP of their 2009 avant-orch-pop album, As Seen Through Windows.
Bell Orchestre enlisted a credible lineup of mostly established electronic artists and studio wizards, including Tim Hecker, Mad Professor, Kid Koala, and Hôtel-de-Ville's Rhett Brewer, to rework the analog-recorded (by Tortoise's John McEntire) source material. Not surprisingly, none of the remixers embarrass themselves. Kid Koala, for example, strips some of the richer string and woodwind arrangements from "Icicles/Bicycles" and foregrounds a single plucked string tone, to hypnotic effect. In the process, he makes a minor point: Bell Orchestre, who rarely fail to indulge their whims-- from lumbering horn passages to the forced whizz-bang of group cheers-- might actually benefit from a little more focus. "Water/Light/Shifts" takes similar shape in Tim Hecker's hands. The original twinkles like twilight-drunk fireflies and damp fairy lights, which the remix distills into a thick spray of white noise. Both versions, however, offer the same soothing, mind-clearing mood of a yoga routine topped by a cup of green tea.
"As Seen Through Windows" is probably the only remix that bothers to shift any frames. Dub legend Mad Professor reverb-warps the album track's melancholy melody (intentionally or not, a doppelgänger for Julee Cruise's "Mysteries of Love"), layering it atop a hiccupping dubstep beat. What once implied a high school gym packed with band geeks who've locked their faculty advisor in the supply closet is now a 3 a.m. Special K-fuelled London nightclub hallucination. That Mad Professor's the rare guest who understands his remix assignment and stamps a legible signature on it is puzzling, but what's really weird is that Bell Orchestre's presumably content to release an EP of bland, faithful fare. I don't say this because they're experimentally inclined and genre-uncommitted, either. When a band plots an album around a concept like As Seen Through Windows, they're clearly curious about the subjective nature of art and eager to peer through as many lenses as possible.
