Nothing is fixed, nothing is final. This is the promise of the remix—fluidity. Turn a good song upside down or inside out, and you’ll discover something new every time. Ghanaian duo Jowaa demonstrate as much with their remix of Fever Ray’s “To the Moon and Back”: Working off the original’s squiggly background sounds, their anime-like “Ay ay ay ay” provides an irresistible lead vocal in the first half of the remix. The track is a highlight of Plunge Remix, a new collection of previously released and brand new remixes of songs from Plunge, Fever Ray’s 2017 album about swerving conformity and finding new ways to express one’s sexuality. In the Ghanaian language Ga, jo waa means something like dance hard—a message celebrated in queer communities the world over. To dance is to not stagnate.
For a while in the late 2000s and early ’10s, remixes were almost like a form of payola for mp3 bloggers, who required an endless stream of tracks to give away to readers. Multiple remixes could generate multiple posts and help stoke buzz. While Plunge Remix will serve to remind you of Plunge, that’s not what drives it. Instead, the collection nudges the remix closer to its dancehall and disco origins; each version is in conversation with the club scene that the remixer knows best. From Lisbon’s DJ Marfox to NYC’s NAR, the producers selected to recontextualize Plunge span the globe, opening the possibility for the album’s invigorating depictions of sex and desire to reach dancefloors far and wide. As Fever Ray’s Karin Dreijer noted in a 2017 interview, “There’s a lot of fucking on the album—fuck, fuck, fuck the whole time!—but it’s important because the ways of fucking that don’t make up heterosexual sex are super-stigmatised.”
If you have a little imagination, there are infinite ways of sharing intimacy. As if to nod in that direction, Plunge Remix features not one but five reworks of the cocoon-cracking “Mustn’t Hurry” (co-produced by Paula Temple, who remixes another track here). Swedish artist Tami T disregards the title and nearly triples the pace, bringing the beat to a gallop. STAYCORE collective member Dinamarca respects the bpm but shifts the perspective to widescreen. N.A.A.F.I’s Lao employs echo and acoustic percussion to delectable effect, while Shanghai producer Tzusing’s grinding version includes an existential roar. Completing the quintet, Aasthma (the duo of Pär Grindvik and frequent Fever Ray collaborator Peder Mannerfelt) turns in a dusty rave take.
In total, the digital version of Plunge Remix features 21 remixes by 18 producers (three pull a double shift, including Dreijer themself). Between them, they explore seven tracks from Plunge, plus “I’m Not Done,” a holdover from 2009’s Fever Ray that enjoyed a new life on the Plunge tour. On paper, the repetitions stack up, but listening to the compilation somehow never feels that way. With its circling lyrical motifs and wide spread of tempos and textures, Plunge Remix comes off as the type of mixtape you could put on at a house party to inspire both limb-shaking and love-making. Björk’s industrial interpretation of “This Country” skews furthest from simple pleasure—its abrasive metallic tones are an articulation of the song’s central lyric (“this country makes it hard to fuck”)—but hold out for Johannesburg duo FAKA, who add vocals to the instrumental “Plunge” and turn it into a sacred slow jam.
Being a good remixer requires being a good listener: to take a song somewhere new, you have to know where it’s coming from. What makes Plunge Remix such an enjoyable listen is how warmly each remixer embraces the original’s hungry and curious spirit. One might almost wonder which really came first, Plunge or Plunge Remix? Of course, Plunge Remix was the response—but the nighttime spaces it inhabits, the world it lives and breathes and fucks in, is where Plunge was born in the first place.
Buy: Rough Trade
