It's been nice to watch Amadou & Mariam blossom into a globe-spanning pop group over the course of the last decade. Go back 20 years and listen to some of their earliest recordings as a duo. They're very good, a husband and wife singing together, supported only by his guitar. But they give very little hint regarding where they'd find themselves at this point in their career, as fixtures on the international festival circuit and collaborators with Damon Albarn and Manu Chao. Their move from that humble beginning into a transcendent style that embraces music from all over the world has been wholehearted, and the duo's last two albums, Dimanche À Bamako and Welcome to Mali, were both excellent examples of the way pop can be transcultural without losing its sense of regional identity.
Remixes is, it must be said, not as essential as those two albums, either in terms of overall vision or overall quality. It is, however, interesting and worthwhile in other ways. First, some of the music is quite good, and that's obviously the most important thing. But beyond that, it presents a sort of alternate-reality Amadou & Mariam, where the couple are less borderless pop stars than hosts of a melting-pot dance party. It's not a bad reality. The record starts a little slowly, following a rather straight take on "Africa" that pushes guest rapper K'Naan even further to the fore than the version on Welcome to Mali with a couple of tracks that don't quite grasp the rhythmic pulse and inclusive grasp of their source. Like Akon's remix of "Coulibaly", which loses all the original's fluency.
Things pick up in the middle, though. It's not surprising that the spare synth-pop song "Sabali" is a popular choice for the remixers, appearing three times here. Miike Snow focuses on its cosmic qualities, building it into a space-age pop hymn, while Vitalic blows it out into a sweeping but compact synth-house track. Grey X Sage's move to turn it into a duet between Mariam and Theophilus London is imaginative but a little cluttered. Ashley Beedle's "Afrikanz on Marz" remix of "Coulibaly" captures the spirit of the original more than Akon's take, essentially retrofitting it as modern disco, which is a popular approach on the disc overall. The best track may be the Mo DJ remix of "Masiteladi"-- it's built around Amadou's fiery lead guitar work, and its combination of electronic textures and Malian balafon (a type of xylophone) feels natural.
Amadou & Mariam are reported to be working on a new album with a whole new set of partners. In the meantime, Remixes speaks to the strength and flexibility of the music they've already made, even as it often struggles to hit on anything as exciting as its source material.
