Quick question for anyone who's zoned out to Julianna Barwick's gorgeous 2011 album The Magic Place: Did you ever think to yourself, "This is cool, but I'd love to hear some beats laid on top of these tracks?" Me neither. But given that this EP is a low-key release being sold on Bandcamp for $5 (and available to stream for free), you can't begrudge Barwick or her label for wanting to extend the life of that album. If nothing else, given the strength of her last record, she deserves a victory lap.
One issue with remixing tracks from The Magic Place is that they're hard to pull apart. With their layers of voices, heavy reverb, and instrumental loops, they feel integrated and whole, each part gaining its meaning through its relationship to the others. That's true in all music, of course, but with immersive ambient tracks based on addition and subtraction and so dependent on harmony for musical content, it becomes that much more difficult to isolate one element and build something new out of it.
Four remixers here give it a try (the six-song set is rounded out by the album versions of "Vow" and "Prizewinning"). Diplo and Lunice's take on "Vow" is, in one sense, the most cookie-cutter version, in that it mostly does what remixes of indie music have been doing since the late 1990s: isolates a small section of the original and adds some programmed drums. By foregrounding an electric keyboard refrain, giving the tune more of a pulse, and adding a 1980s sheen, it actually bridges the gap between Barwick and Enya circa Watermark, but it feels more like an uninspired original track that happens to have some samples from Julianna Barwick than a proper song. Helado Negro's take is more interesting, as it condenses rather than separates, creating a compact loop of highly melodic sound that reminds me of early Four Tet remixes. On top of the loop is an original vocal, presumably from project leader Roberto Carlos Lange, and it has some relationship to the original but doesn't feel bound to it. It's solid, but not something I'm likely to return to.
The two remixes of "Prizewinning" include the set's high and low points. The duo Alias Pail cut up Barwick's vocals and fold in some tribal drums, and the result feels like an empty exercise. Prince Rama, on the other hand, take the track and amplify it, making it more in every respect-- surging sounds, changed vocals, extra-shimmery production-- and it works surprisingly well, almost brilliantly. To my ears, it's the best thing Prince Rama have ever done, and it winds up feeling like a proper collaboration that has a compelling reason to exist. That's ultimately all you can ask for from a remix, even if it doesn't happen often enough.
