It was tempting to write off this remix project as another example of strobe lights, Dolby-amplified gunfire, and smoke machines being used to disguise an otherwise meek poet onstage with an awkward haircut.
However, three reinterpretations of songs from Marc Bianchi (Her Space Holiday)'s dream-pop/chamber-hop joint, The Young Machines, garner a new appreciation of the wounded bard who sleeps under his bed. Matmos revises our man's violin handiwork on "Tech Romance" as a lost Appalachian-folk tune, where a tinker-toy xylophone leads a ballad of weary guitars and syrup-leaking strings. Bianchi rambles like a stranger digging through your trash for soda cans at 2 a.m. in Nobody's vinyl-hissing dub treatment of "From South Carolina". And then Stereolab cruelly create a sitcom punch line for Bianchi's "Girl Problem". The band first plays peachy keen surf-rock crescendos as he sings, "Here is the point where I fall apart/ For the second time." Then comes the "Munsters"-esque shindig, where he pouts, "I've got a girl problem/ I've got a drug problem!" But everything is resolved by a Burt Bacharach clone on the electronic ivories as our hero exhales, "And I will always think of you as someone that I love."
Bianchi generally writes bad poetry that's harvested from genuine feeling, as Oscar Wilde might have called it. He definitely earned his stripes, as so many critics awarded Bianchi's testicular chutzpah for speaking his soul. Yet the remixers mainly focus more on enhancing his runny-nosed but admirable synth instrumentation than bringing his lyrics to the fore. Not everything clicks: Dntel frolics on a beach in sunset to Easy Listening schmaltz as Bianchi gives a VD clinic lecture on "Japanese Gum". Most surprising is Blockhead's fingerprints on "Meet the Pressure". There, Bianchi originally whined about critics who dissed his music: "Don't get me wrong I don't mind getting bad reviews...But there are others who just love to cross that line/ Hoping that their viciousness will boost traffic on their site." Blockhead had the nerve to reduce those cries into an instrumental theme for a Mexican soap opera-- complete with taunting flutes, flamenco guitars, and senoritas sighing.
A more appropriate treatment is the Super Furry Animals' trip to Perrey-Kingsley country on "Sleepy California". It's a royal choice when Bianchi announces, "I never thought I'd say this, but I miss my mom." Elsewhere, Arab Strap imagines the post-breakup dirge "Something To Do With My Hands" as a new wave disco number for a mid-80's teen dramedy. Boom Bip marinates "The Luxury of Loneliness" with electro-funk dribbling and hypnotic guitar murmuring-- letting fresh air into the hermit's black-walled bedroom. However, Bianchi's motivational speech still hurts, as he whispers, "I think that the worst part of it all is that you don't know how beautiful you are/ That isn't all right."
