What a bizarrely tardy project, this remix comp. The original 45:33, James Murphy's contribution to Nike's intermittent series of one-artist mixes designed for exercise, is edging up on being three years old. In Internet-era time, the DFA might as well have let these producers loose on original Giorgio Moroder demos.
Not that 45:33 itself sounds dated, already owing so much to classic disco and techno. Like all LCD releases, 45:33 was Murphy acting as curator of his local dance music historical society, while thrillingly (at its best) filtering it through his own mix of mordancy and guarded euphoria. Lest we forget, it contained an embryonic version of LCD's "Someone Great", sans vocals, making it more or less the debut of Murphy's more tender side, something that bloomed gorgeously on the following year's Sound of Silver.
But remix comps are generally rush-to-market affairs crassly designed to capitalize on a hot release by extending its commercial value for a few more months. The presumably long gestation time of 45:33 Remixes might make you think we're getting something really special, something that took time to get just right. In reality, not so much. 45:33 Remixes is more-or-less superfluous, the depressingly common fate of the bulk of remix comps. Of the eight remixers, no less than five fix on the exact same section of the original 45:33, which starts around 18 minutes in and dissolves into brass gurgles 10 minutes later. Given that the remixers had 45 minutes worth of music to rebuild from the ground up, leaning on the most traditionally "disco" section of 45:33, complete with horns and diva, and leaving it mostly intact feels like a failure of nerve and/or imagination.
Brooklyn duo Runaway add watery keyboard stabs that blow arrhythmically against the main beat, as if they were playing an Arthur Russell demo on top of the original. Akwardly. Prince Language throws on some dub wobble, but you've got to A/B the two versions closely to even gauge what he's added or subtracted, the "playing with the levels" school of remixing at its blandest.
And Theo Parrish, who you'd assume could at least be relied on to add some soul-funk grit to the proceedings, comes momentarily correct with boogie bass and extra percussion. But for a guy who could squeeze so much emotion out of the minimal materials of the ruthlessly raw, repetitive "Ugly Edits" series, Parrish's remix blands out over its seven-plus minutes, despite being 10 times more overstuffed. Hey, another Walter Gibbons-aping breakdown with call-and-response drums reverbed to hell and back. It might not seem so deadeningly familiar if it rivaled Gibbons' own best work.
Of the four, only Riley Reinhold does anything remotely interesting with that 10-minute slab of downtown-NYC-in-the-1970s retro. His big innovation is replacing the 4/4 disco swish with a rigid electro-breakbeat shuffle. Even given how generic and/or tentative the other three remixes sound, you can't exactly call Reinhold's remix revelatory.
That leaves four remixers to try and make up for the creativity deficit. And they're good, though not one wows enough to obviate the cost of the whole collection. Prins Thomas takes the original's most feathery section, the cascade of Tangerine Dream-ish synths and wordless vocals that make up the long outro, and turns in pop ambient by adding a micro-syncopated pulse. Trus'Me's electro is the set's most playful and unexpected track, especially when it closes with twinkling mallets that could be kissing cousin to the kind you used to get on Tortoise or Nobukazu Takemura records.
Padded Cell's the only remixer who thought, "Hey, maybe I can patch different sections of the original together to make something that extends the vibe, rather than adding congas and calling it a day." (A seriously missed opportunity on everyone else's part.) He takes the outro coos that also beguiled Thomas and adds the lugubrious piano house that serves as the original's warmup. And surprise, surprise, they fit perfectly together, each adding to the other's preexisting sad dreaminess for the best remix here.
What 45:33 Remixes lacks most is personality, something even LCD's experimental one-offs (like the original 45:33) reliably offer. See: Pilooski's deep house pastiche. Yes, it sounds nothing like the original. It just sounds like... a deep house pastiche. It's not just that the remixes dilute Murphy's inimitable presence in his own music; 45:33 was mostly vocal-free to begin with. It's that the remixers don't add much of themselves to compensate, preferring to subtly tweak sections of the original to make them more dancefloor friendly or shove them through familiar schtick.
That's the charitable view, at least. A sadder take might be that the artists were just cashing a much-needed check, whether it was cut three weeks or three years after 45:33 hit iTunes. Or worse, they blanched at the freedom to dismantle Murphy's creation to satisfy their own idiosyncratic wants, their hesitancy all the more strange considering that LCD's whole M.O., what makes the band more than a sterile realization of the gag at the heart of "Losing My Edge", is Murphy's willingness to bend or break history to make room for himself.
