While an album of remixes isn't necessarily going to provide an earth-shaking display of musical genius, it might be nice to hear some sort of effort at genuine creativity.
Global Grooves, a new album of techno mixing and electronica, doesn't seem to have it. In an attempt to remix old club hits and incorporate artists not normally in the techno realm, Global Grooves fails to show ingenuity, excepting a few stylized drumbeats.
The songs used in their entirety with new backbeats and overdubbed lyrics, like Lisa Loeb's "Stay" and Cher's "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss)," are surprisingly good. Hearing the driving beat Juan Patino mixes into the "anticipation mix" of Stay makes you forget Loeb's horn-rimmed-glasses-good-girl image and entices you to boogie down.
The samples, though, of really good songs, like Noa's "I Don't Know" fall short. The poetic imagery of the song, with a woman described as a bright, burning flower, fighting her way through confusion, is enough on its own, with a plain simple melody. So, the funky bass kick and strange synthesized bump-and-grind feel Dekkard injects is just a needless complication.
And then there's the humdrum done-before selections. Pete Lorimer and Richard "Humpty" Vission give Raw Stylus's "Believe In Me" a jungle treatment that screams "Where have I heard this before?" Still, there are some danceable selections. Though "Lay Down Your Pain" by Toni Childs and "Love Him Anyway" by Sherree Ford-Payne share the same bongo drumbeat, they are still easy to groove to. And Rabbit In the Moon has remixed Garbage's "Queer" into a reverberating, repetitive tune, reminiscent of beeping garbage trucks, which is still somehow intriguing.
In giving a second chance to all of these songs, the DJs should have tried harder not to parody the originals with new bass beats. These Global Grooves need a bit more of the world in them for the title to stand up.
-Stephanie Jo Klein
Lisa Loeb