DFA Remixes World Cup! (Part One)
In late 2023, me and my friend Teamy embarked on an epic undertaking: listening to all the releases on the label Dissident (2007-2009) and pitting them against each other in a no-holds-barred knockout tournament we called The Dissident World Cup. You can revisit that championship bracket — with all its twists and turns — here: Part One / Part Two / Part Three.
Well, two years later it’s now time for us to return to the format with a new contest! And rising above all other candidates for the bracket this time (sorry, Speicher series, but we weren’t quite ready for the full 128) were the golden boys from New York, The DFA.
The DFA started out as the production duo of James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy who then, along with manager Jonathan Galkin, founded the label of the same name. Starting out with a bang in 2002 with The Rapture’s ‘House Of Jealous Lovers’, The Juan Maclean’s ‘By The Time I Get To Venus’ and LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Losing My Edge’, the label drove renewed interest in post/dance punk while also surfing the wider wave of nu disco then cresting on both sides of the pond. (Incidentally, a book about LCD Soundsystem and the wider DFA Cinematic Universe™ is about to be published by Disco Pogo.)
In parallel with their original productions, the duo were also busy remixing artists in their orbit, starting with NYC art punk outfits like Le Tigre and Fischerspooner before graduating to some more major label commissions (Justin Timberlake, anyone?). Between 2001 and 2008 they made 28 remixes in total, cultivating a signature style that more often than not saw track lengths extend beyond the 8 minute mark, with psychedelic percussion workouts, dramatic shifts or movements and, more than once, a complete transformation in vibe from the original.
Me and Teamy had a blast revisiting all these remixes and pitting them against each other. Before we get into the first-round match-ups, though, a bit of context. Let’s call this section: “The DFA & Me”.
The DFA & Me: Joe
“I started out listening to the DFA when I was a teenager reading Pitchfork Magazine, old enough to be listening to the music but not quite old enough to be going out to the gigs. The first gig of theirs I went to wasn’t until LCD Soundsystem’s Sound Of Silver launch party at Cargo (on 5 March 2007 - ed.), put on specially for members of the band’s forum. Me and my friend G went and took home white label double LPs of the album. But aside from that I was a fan and home listener. One of my most treasured DFA releases is the DFA #2 triple CD box set, which must still be one of the most influential purchases I ever made.
There are tracks on that compilation that I still play today. So that’s my DFA story: not a personal one because I never met them, but I was a middling-to-high-level fan.”
The DFA & Me: Teamy
“Mine’s a strange one because whilst being a fan and really into their music and the label, I also count several of them as close friends. I started working for Optimo in around 2000 and the final gig of The Rapture’s first ever European tour was at Optimo, so we met at a party afterwards and hung out. Then when LCD played Optimo a year later I was their artist liaison, took them for dinner, and we became good friends. I went to New York and hung out at the studio, became friends with Tim and the rest of them at DFA. So they’re really good friends, but I’ve also somehow managed to separate that from the music. I don’t want to lose the fan aspect. When they’re on stage I’m still ‘oh my god!’ But then afterwards we’re just like ‘hiya!’.
I’m going to preface everything I say in this with a big ‘I don’t know for sure’ because I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there when they recorded the mixes, but I know how they worked and I’ve spoken to them and others about it. From what I can tell it was mostly James and Tim doing the remixes, mostly with their engineer Eric Broucek, and Tim Sweeney was involved in some of the early ones. He actually performs on one of them. And then other people who were in the studio to play instruments.
Then at some point, I don’t know exactly when, the relationship between James and Tim soured and dissipated. I think anyone who’s paid attention or read the book Meet Me In The Bathroom will know that. There was legal action, lots going on. It’s weird when friends fall out and ultimately it’s none of my business, but also it’s not of interest to me; the politics. What’s interesting is the studio stuff, who was doing this or that, how it comes through in the music, and I think that’s been sidelined a bit because people love ‘fofoca’*. Though of course knowing them a bit — how they work, how they think — you can speculate about who was involved in which remix, especially the later ones.”
(*Brazilian Portuguese word for gossip/drama)
(Note: the final remix released under the name The DFA was for Clinic in November 2008. Beginning in 2006, Tim Goldsworthy had been doing solo remixes as ‘The Loving Hand’, increasing this output from 2008 onwards. He moved back to the UK in 2010; the contradictory quotes from Goldsworthy and Galkin in this news article reveal something of the state of affairs at the time. In 2013, James Murphy did a solo remix of David Bowie’s ‘Love Is Lost’ under the name ‘James Murphy for The DFA’.)
The bracket
Before showing the tournament bracket, it’s worth just looking at the full list of remixes in chronological order by year. It’s quite the body of work:
2001
Fischerspooner - ‘Emerge’ [Capitol, 2001]
Le Tigre - ‘Deceptacon’ [Mr. Lady, 2001]
2002
Metro Area - ‘Orange Alert’ [Environ, 2002]
Radio 4 - ‘Dance To The Underground’ [City Slang, 2002]
2003
Chromeo - ‘Destination Overdrive’ [Turbo, 2003]
Delia Gonzalez & Gavilán Rayna Russom* - ‘Rise’ [DFA, 2003]
Junior Senior - ‘Shake Your Coconuts’ [Atlantic, 2003]
The Rapture - ‘Sister Saviour’ [DFA, 2003]
UNKLE - ‘In A State’ [Universal Island, 2003]
2004
J.O.Y. - ‘Sunplus’ [DFA, 2004]
N.E.R.D - ‘She Wants To Move’ [Virgin, 2004]
Pixeltan - ‘Get Up, Say What’ [DFA, 2004]
2005
Black Dice - ‘Smiling Off’ [DFA, 2005]
Gorillaz - ‘Dare’ [Parlophone, 2005]
Hot Chip - ‘(Just Like We) Breakdown’ [DFA, 2005]
Nine Inch Nails - ‘The Hand That Feeds’ [Interscope, 2005]
Soulwax - ‘Another Excuse’ [[PIAS], 2005]
The Chemical Brothers - ‘The Boxer’ [Virgin, 2005]
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - ‘Mars, Arizona’ [Mute, 2005]
2006
Arthur Russell - ‘Springfield’ [Audika, 2006]
Captain - ‘Frontline’ [EMI, 2006]
Delia Gonzalez & Gavilán Rayna Russom* - ‘Relevee’ [DFA, 2006]
Goldfrapp - ‘Slide In’ [Mute, 2006]
Hot Chip - ‘Colours’ [EMI, 2006]
Justin Timberlake - ‘My Love’ [Jive, 2006]
Tiga - ‘(Far From) Home’ [Different, 2006]
2008
Clinic - ‘Tomorrow’ [Domino, 2008]
M.I.A. - ‘Paper Planes’ [XL, 2008]
(*fka Gavin Russom)
How to evaluate such a diverse bunch? We thought about different criteria we could apply to the remixes and came up with the following general ideas, which were not hard-and-fast scoring categories, but useful for giving a sense of what counted in these match-ups:
“How good is the track?” The main criteria, encompassing how it makes you feel, would you play it, that kind of thing.
“Would it be better off it was an instrumental?” This criteria came about because Teamy was a member of a message board with the DFA themselves where Tim would occasionally upload unreleased instrumentals of the remixes they put out. In the tournament we counted only the released versions, and it was a negative mark if we felt the vocals detract from the tune.
“What does the remix do to the original?” In some cases we may feel like the remix elevates an otherwise boring track. In others we might think it hews too closely to the original, has too light a touch. In yet others we may think both the original and the remix are shite.
It will come as no surprise that our own personal histories with these tracks come into play too — and some of them we hold very, very dear.
So here’s the all-important bracket:
As you can see, given there were 28 tracks, me and Teamy chose two remixes each to go straight through to the second round. Our reasoning for these choices will be touched on in the corresponding match-ups, but they’re not necessarily our favourites! Besides those free passes, the other remixes were all assigned to the bracket completely randomly, making for some spicy first round match-ups.
Round of 32: Group One
The first quarter of the bracket runs the full gamut of DFA remix output from 2001 (‘Emerge’) through to 2008 (‘Paper Planes’). Teamy used his first free pass on the remix of Hot Chip’s ‘Colours’, so we’ll return to talk about that tune in the second round.
Metro Area - ‘Orange Alert’ vs M.I.A. - ‘Paper Planes’
Given the timing of these remixes, Teamy reckons that the Metro Area remix (2002) was James and Tim working together, while the M.I.A. remix (2008) would possibly have been James alone or with other people in the studio. Teamy prefers the Metro Area track, and also points out that M.I.A. is completely bats (in 2024 she launched a fashion line including a bucket hat made from Faraday fabric to prevent damage from 5G), though we’re not sure if that’s a relevant criteria. Joe argues that ‘Paper Planes’ is transformed in the remix, while the ‘Orange Alert’ version is, unsurprisingly for one nu disco duo remixing another, kind of more of the same. Joe says he’s a sucker for a good pop remix and, compared to the other major label pop remixes in this bracket, ‘Paper Planes’ really stands out. In the end it’s the distinctiveness that swings it for M.I.A.
Winner: M.I.A. - ‘Paper Planes’
Junior Senior - ‘Shake Your Coconuts’ vs Arthur Russell - ‘Springfield’
Teamy has very strong thoughts on this one and I insist he gives them first. He says he knows, somewhere deep inside, that the Junior Senior song is “cheeseball central”, but he LOVES IT. He loves the stupid vocals (“shake your coconuts until the milk comes out”) and claims there is a worse lyric in one of the other remixes. Joe says he was actually surprised to find, on revisiting this one, that he really enjoyed it. Teamy notes James’s joyous backing vocal yelps, which show how much fun they were having fun in the studio. That’s in stark contrast to the Arthur Russell remix, which really sounds more like an edit of the original than a remix. “Someone just put a beat on it,” Joe observes. The groove and swing of the remix is all there in the original track already. Both of us agree that this track falls far short of the expectations you’d have of The DFA remixing one of their all-time heroes and inspirations. Perhaps they were too respectful. In any case, it falls a bit flat. So, yes, Arthur Russell has been knocked out by Junior Senior: that’s the magic of remixes!
Winner: Junior Senior - ‘Shake Your Coconuts’
Justin Timberlake - ‘My Love’ vs Fischerspooner - ‘Emerge’
Before introducing this match-up, Joe prefaces it by saying it may well be the easiest decision of the whole tournament. He isn’t even sure how one of these two even came about — just why did JT’s management team decide The DFA were the ones to zhuzh up ‘My Love’? And how much money did they offer for the duo to accept? In Joe’s opinion, the resulting remix is a bit of a dirge and sounds just like DFA-by-numbers: those ‘psssh!’ noises are straight out of their earlier remix of ‘Rise’, and the usual trippy odyssey it goes on in the second half feels, for once, somehow trite. The remix of ‘Emerge’, on the other hand, is a lively flip of the slowburning original, turning Casey Spooner’s sleazy come-ons into something more arch. Teamy notes that being such an early one, the ‘Emerge’ remix captures a moment before they had really found their sound. Meanwhile, the JT remix sounds like a DFA offcut with a Justin vocal bolted on to it. There’s absolutely no contest here.
Winner: Fischerspooner - ‘Emerge’
Round of 32: Group Two
Joe gave his first free pass to Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom's ‘Rise’, for entirely sentimental reasons that we’ll come back to. Elsewhere in this bracket we have the remix with which The DFA made their name in 2001 - Le Tigre’s ‘Deceptacon’. Let’s get into it.
Pixeltan - ‘Get Up, Say What’ vs Chromeo - ‘Destination: Overdrive’
Joe doesn’t really remember Chromeo and finds this remix a bit noisy and rowdy. Teamy doesn’t mind it so much but also struggles to remember anything about the original. We both agree that the Pixeltan tune is vastly superior. Teamy notes that it’s one of the first instances of the DFA formula ‘here’s the remix…and now here’s a whole load of disco odyssey as a bonus’ — that is, the ‘Say What’ portion of the tune. Teamy is a sucker for any “singer who sounds like the woman from Maximum Joy” — not the last of them in this tournament. And Joe has fond memories of the tune appearing on that box set. It’s Pixeltan all the way.
Winner: Pixeltan - ‘Get Up, Say What’
The Rapture - ‘Sister Saviour’ vs Le Tigre - ‘Deceptacon’
“Two big ones” Joe says. He likes both the tracks and he likes both of the originals, but he says that it comes down to how much of a change is there in the remix, and the ‘Sister Saviour’ remix doesn’t really change very much at all. It still gets a lot of DJ play (indeed we heard it at Club CCC at Lux earlier this year), but we both agree that the original is better. We’ll come back to ‘Deceptacon’ in round two as there’s plenty to say about that one!
Winner: Le Tigre - ‘Deceptacon’
Hot Chip - ‘(Just Like We) Breakdown’ vs Radio 4 - ‘Dance To The Underground’
Joe says that it’s not really a criteria, but he loves any track title that has brackets in it. What he means by that is that it is actually a very important criteria that will come up more than once during this tournament. Teamy notes that the Radio 4 remix features Tim Sweeney on the saxophone. We both like it, but in general we feel like Hot Chip outdo Radio 4 on every count.
Winner: Hot Chip - ‘(Just Like We) Breakdown’
Round of 32: Group Three
Joe gave another free pass to ‘Smiling Off’ by Black Dice, a bit of a curveball that he wanted to protect in the first round. Beyond that there are some epics here, with four of the remixes clocking in at 9 minutes or longer.
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - ‘Mars, Arizona’ vs Tiga - ‘(Far From) Home’
Joe hadn’t actually heard the JSBS remix before and thought it was great. Gnarly. Teamy explains they were a pretty big rock band and he was surprised when The DFA remixed them, but it works. Apparently Tim Goldsworthy was really proud of this one and we can see why. There’s the big rock-y bit and then the huge breakdown comes in. Teamy says his ex-girlfriend once asked him to turn the tune off because the squalling synths were making her feel nauseous. We count that in its favour. As for ‘(Far From) Home’, Joe listened to Sextor a lot but was never a big fan of this song in particular, despite its use of brackets in the track title. Teamy says he knew it as an instrumental first anyway, thanks to The DFA putting it up on the forum mentioned above, and also releasing it on one of their own remix compilations, implying that they preferred it to the vocal version. We agree that the Tiga instrumental is killer, but it still loses out to the all-round smasher of ‘Mars, Arizona’.
Winner: The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - ‘Mars, Arizona’
Soulwax - ‘Another Excuse’ vs UNKLE - ‘In A State’
Joe says he doesn’t have much skin in this match-up since, as someone who never really listened to Soulwax and wasn’t a huge fan of UNKLE (despite owning Psyence Fiction on CD), neither of them are really his thing. Teamy finds this choice difficult as he likes both remixes a lot. The UNKLE remix is 12 minutes long and Teamy has a theory that the durational thing is more of a ‘Tim’ thing, with Goldsworthy jamming and experimenting in the studio. (Teamy notes that the ‘In A State’ remix is drenched in reverb, and recalls being there once when Tim, working on the version of Liquid Liquid’s ‘Bellhead’, demonstrated how they had hooked up a service elevator in the back of the building with mics to use as a reverb device.) Meanwhile James perhaps brought some more focus and conciseness to proceedings. Sometimes those two things would come together in harmony and true, timeless magic would result — for example on DFA high watermark ‘Casual Friday’. But in the end, Teamy feels that the tightness of the ‘Another Excuse’ remix takes it through over the sprawl of ‘In A State’.
Winner: Soulwax - ‘Another Excuse’
Nine Inch Nails - ‘The Hand That Feeds’ vs N.E.R.D - ‘She Wants To Move’
We both instantly put NIN through. Teamy says he thinks the N.E.R.D remix isn’t bad, but Joe isn’t so sure. It doesn’t need to be 8 minutes long and it also includes one of Teamy’s least favourite lyrics of all time (“Her ass is a space ship I want to ride”). We’ll come back to the NIN remix (remixes, in fact, as there are different versions) in the second round.
Winner: Nine Inch Nails - ‘The Hand That Feeds’
Round of 32: Group Four
Teamy’s final free pass goes to The Chemical Brothers with ‘The Boxer’ featuring Tim Burgess from The Charlatans on vocals. A bit of an outlier that one, which we’ll get to in the second round. There are a couple of early front runners in this group, which I’m sure any DFA aficionado will have clocked straight away…
Captain - ‘Frontline’ vs J.O.Y. - ‘Sunplus’
Joe says it’s difficult to be fair here because ‘Sunplus’ was on that DFA Compilation #2 and so has been in his life for many years, whereas ‘Frontline’ was new to him and didn’t really resonate. Teamy is a big fan of the singy-shouty vocals from J.O.Y. — apparently provided by Yoshimi P-We of Boredoms fame — and notes it sounds like they’re having a blast in the recording session. He isn’t against the Captain remix, speculating that it’s more of a Tim one because of how meandering it is (in a good way!). Either way, he’s happy to put ‘Sunplus’ through.
Winner: J.O.Y. - ‘Sunplus’
Clinic - ‘Tomorrow’ vs Gorillaz - ‘Dare’
This is a massively unfair fight. The Clinic remix is “totally fine”. As one of the last remixes The DFA did, it sounds a little half-done: Teamy suggests it was made around the same time as Tim and Tim Sweeney’s T&T re-edit of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstition’, and uses many of the same ideas. Unfortunately it’s up against ‘Dare’, which we will have plenty to say about in the upcoming rounds. As a taster, Joe notes that he was a big Gorillaz fan first time round, listening to their debut album incessantly; but in the intervening years he lost interest in them, only to now find cool DJs around the world enacting a kind of revival. To be continued…
Winner: Gorillaz - ‘Dare’
Goldfrapp - ‘Slide In’ vs Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - ‘Relevee’
Teamy speaks for both of us when he says: “If this was up against anything else, I’d make a strong argument for ‘Relevee’”. The jazzy flourishes and vocals, the fact it stands up to the huge C2 remix on the same 12”…on any other day it would go through. But it’s up against an absolute titan in ‘Slide In’, surely a candidate for the crown, so unfortunately it bows out here. Thankfully Joe put ‘Rise’ through into round two already, so D&G still have a horse in this race.
(Incidentally, after this write-up, Joe bought the 2×12” package of ‘Relevee’ remixes and was amazed to find a Baby Ford remix on the same release. Weapon!)
Winner: Goldfrapp - ‘Slide In’
And there we have it! 12 remixes knocked out, 16 remain:
Join us in Part Two soon, where we cover the tracks that got a free pass or breezed through round one without discussion. And let us know if we’ve axed any of your favourites prematurely!
Excited for the rest of the bracket!! All my horses are still in the race >:)
Incidentally, concerns about EMFs don't seem so batty when you consider that human-caused EM emissions are some billions of times higher than natural EMFs, and that the telecom industry resists regulation and downplays the growing body of inconvenient science in order to deploy still more wireless tech... okay, soapbox moment over