Silent Alarm Remixed is one the best top-to-bottom remixes of a rock record ever put together, though that's damning praise at best. In retrospect, Silent Alarm was unusually well-positioned for this sort of treatment: Though energetic and brash and packed with ideas, the production was spacious enough to leave something to the imagination. And though seduced by dance music's textures and form, Bloc Party needed someone to take it there while they fretted about serious shit like gas prices and manifest destiny. It also didn't hurt that the original was a hell of a record to begin with.
All this goes a long way towards explaining how Intimacy is the Bloc Party record most indebted to electronic composition and yet the worst suited for a full-length remix. In its original form, Intimacy already sounded like a remix of a rock record, overstuffed and pimped out exhibits of Paul Epworth and Jacknife Lee's studio trickery. The best and possibly only way to hear these songs differently would be to be strip them down to the chassis: Even if you were into "Ares" and "Mercury", did you think, "Hey, you know what these songs could use? More block rockin' beats and star guitars!"? Kele Okereke's vocal performances on each were goofy enough to be hooky, but Intimacy Remixed starts out with two variations on the same blow-snorting bassline and candy raver thump that will remind you that as long as it's been since you listened to Justice's †, it's been even longer since you've seen Go.
Truth is that for all the hoping-for-a-miracle stridency of Silent Alarm, Bloc Party have always been a band that's way more sappy than their reputation sometimes allows. But that could've been used to their advantage here, since many of the electronic acts that have crossed over to rockist ears have not only dealt in softer, more cerebral sounds, but also more minimal ones. I don't know if Air France could salvage "Zephyrus" or whether "Mercury" could be chopped and looped Field-style or if "Halo" could make for solid dubstep or if Intimacy could possibly go Balearic. But doesn't that already sound like a more interesting angle? "Signs" was basically *Intimacy'*s answer to "So Here We Are", very gorgeous on its own, but still leaving airspace to float upwards to-- I'd certainly like to hear what Four Tet could do with it, because even if Armand Van Helden's hyper-compressed swells are at least an original take, it still ruins the mood completely. "Ion Square" ended the original iTunes release of Intimacy on a note of gorgeous hope, while the Banjo or Freakout remix offers neither, and instead Okereke's vocal falls further and further down an aluminum well.
It's hard to tell who's really at fault here, Bloc Party or their charges. But remix albums all but acknowledge their own inessentiality-- why not take more chances when only the diehards are going to subject themselves to 60 minutes of someone else's idea of what Intimacy could sound like? What if Mogwai showed up with more than just an extra flanger effect? And then No Age of all people show up to tinker with "Better Than Heaven", one of Intimacy's Side-B highlights. You might want to sit down for this, but after a smear of backmasked vocals, it soon becomes a hotly recorded mess of distorted drumming and feedback. Granted, that's old hat for No Age, but the idea of Bloc Party being inspired by their racket is the sort of "who knew?" surprise that a no-expectation affair like this should offer.
And yet, even with Intimacy Remixed's almost non-existent replay value, it actually offers something of a sense of hope. I sometimes wonder if I was too tough on Intimacy, because even if the songs themselves failed, there was at least the indication that Bloc Party was still trying to offer something bigger than even their peers from 2003-2005; Maxïmo Park and Futureheads march sluggishly ever onward to anonymity, while Franz Ferdinand have become so competent that I have to remind myself they actually released a record just this year. I realize that there's plenty of bands that want to sound like "Helicopter", and Bloc Party is no longer one of them-- but Remixed proves that they might want to think different instead of simply thinking bigger.
