DFA Remixes World Cup! (Part Two)
Thanks everyone who gave kind feedback on Part One of the DFA Remixes World Cup! Much to Teamy’s discomfort, this little contest reached some of the very people embroiled (whether they like it or not) in this very niche Celebrity Deathmatch. We also had a lovely note from my friend Stijn, who features on the cover of the DFA Remixes Vol. 1 compilation (above), alongside some old mates of Teamy’s. It’s a small world.
The DFA Remixes World Cup continues!
The astute among you will have already seen some big ticket head-to-heads looming in the second round, so let’s get into it. Here’s the bracket for the Round of 16:
As mentioned in Part One, the four tracks in each corner were mine and Teamy’s choices to get a bye in the first round, so we’ll be talking about them properly now.
Round of 16: Group One
Hot Chip - ‘Colours’ vs M.I.A. - ‘Paper Planes’
Teamy gave ‘Colours’ a pass in round one and it’s no surprise he favours it over ‘Paper Planes’. It’s such a lush remix, very kosmische. Teamy references Harmonia, the supergroup formed by Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Dieter Moebius and Michael Rother in 1973, and indeed this remix has that density and brightness to it, and Alexis Taylor’s fey vocals — crisp and upfront in the mix — further add to that vibe. It stands out amid all the other remixes for not being a dance track, and shows the DFA duo having fun in the studio with odd little sound details (check the muffled metronome that introduces the tune). It’s such a strong remix, in fact, that neither of us can really remember what the original sounds like. Sorry M.I.A., but Hot Chip has to go through!
Winner: Hot Chip - ‘Colours’
Junior Senior - ‘Shake Your Coconuts’ vs Fischerspooner - ‘Emerge’
It’s getting tougher. We have another listen to ‘Shake Your Coconuts’ and, once again, we just love it. Yes it’s a bit cheesy, yes it’s pastichey, but it simply rocks. But then we stick on ‘Emerge’ and it’s so much fun, ping ponging about without a care in the world. This is definitely the battle of the bops. Teamy says he went in to bat hard for ‘Colours’ in the previous match-up, so he gives Joe the lead on this one. Joe says he’s gonna surprise himself by putting Junior Senior through — in fact, he muses, maybe Junior Senior is going to somehow end up in the final without any of us knowing how it happened. We give ‘Shake Your Coconuts’ a lot of credit for elevating a track that we’d otherwise never have paid attention to. ‘Emerge’ is sexy as hell, but it can’t take on the guitar squall riot of the Junior Senior remix.
Winner: Junior Senior - ‘Shake Your Coconuts’
That gives us our first quarter-final matchup between Hot Chip and Junior Senior, which can’t have been on anyone’s bingo card going into this tournament. “Who would win in a fight between Hot Chip and Junior Senior?” asks Teamy. There are five members in Hot Chip and two in Junior Senior, but we’re not sure any of the members of Hot Chip have ever been in a fight. Junior Senior are Scandinavian and probably have. Teamy says he wouldn’t pick a fight with Alexis as there’s something that gives him the air of a secret scrapper. Let’s hope that theory never has to be put to the test. Joe asks what Hot Chip have been up to recently and Teamy tells him they just released a greatest hits compilation Joy In Repetition and a new single ‘Devotion’. “That’s more than you can say for Junior Senior,” notes Joe.
Round of 16: Group Two
Pixeltan - ‘Get Up, Say What’ vs Le Tigre - ‘Deceptacon’
Joe reiterates his soft spot for the Pixeltan tune just because it was something so new to his ears when he first heard it. Teamy says it has that hallmark of ‘the DFA remix’: the bit where the track goes off on a crazy tangent in the second half. (Though as we have discovered through this bracket, that’s only one sub-genre of ‘the DFA remix’.) ‘Deceptacon’ went through the first round without discussion, so we decide to talk about it properly now. It’s probably the first DFA remix that everyone remembers and, by transforming the original into something quite different, it put Le Tigre on the map for many people beyond their niche audience. Joe notes that the remix slows the vocal down and, in doing so, takes out a lot of the riot grrrl heat of the original. Le Tigre fans might not have liked that, but Tom Tom Club fans surely did. Teamy calls it ‘handbag disco’ and that makes a lot of sense. It’d go down well at a wedding alongside the likes of ‘Get Down Saturday Night’. We relisten to both tunes and still find it really tough. They come from completely different fields. Teamy wraps this one up by saying that, going into this, he’d have pegged ‘Deceptacon’ as one that would go really far, not just for the quality of the tune, but also what it represented for The DFA at that moment in time. But if he follows his heart, he has to go for the stargate wormhole trip of ‘Get Up, Say What’. Joe would be happy either way, so Pixeltan goes through. We know this might be a controversial choice for some of our listeners. “Tough, do your own podcast” - Teamy.
Winner: Pixeltan - ‘Get Up, Say What’
Hot Chip - ‘(Just Like We) Breakdown’ vs Delia Gonzalez & Gavilán Rayna Russom - ‘Rise’
“Oh boy” says Teamy. Both of these resonate with Joe. Hot Chip speaks to his university years, though he admits to never being that big a fan of Hot Chip originals (more on that in later rounds). The ‘Rise’ remix speaks to his post-university years, since he heard Four Tet drop it at a Border Community night at The End back in 2008 or so, and Teamy recalls JG Wilkes from Optimo blending it in with ‘Love Is A Stranger’ regularly enough that it almost became a signature mix. Joe’s been playing it ever since, including just this summer at Honcho Campout (check this post). “It’s spectacular in an understated way,” Joe says. Teamy says he doesn’t have any strong pull either way, so would put through ‘Rise’ simply because Hot Chip already have ‘Colours’ in the quarter-finals. That’ll do for Joe.
Winner: Delia Gonzalez & Gavilán Rayna Russom - ’Rise’
Round of 16: Group Three
Black Dice - ‘Smiling Off’ vs The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - ‘Mars, Arizona’
Joe gave ‘Smiling Off’ a free pass through to the second round because it’s a somewhat oddball personal fav that he wanted to protect. Joe loves how the remix takes the noise elements of the original and reworks them into a punky bleepy proto-house Music Box-style tune, one that he would play in a set. Teamy admires the technical proficiency involved in that transformation and starts to waver a little on his original expectation of voting for ‘Mars, Arizona’. He points out that ‘Smiling Off’ happened after The DFA had signed a deal with EMI (presumably so that EMI could get their hands on LCD Soundsystem), which meant that Black Dice got released through the same label as The Beatles — a bit of a coup. These two tracks both came out in the same year yet are so different from each other, so it really depends on your mood. And right now, we’re in the mood for the inventive, weirdo, un-pigeonholable vibe of ‘Smiling Off’, so it goes through. R.I.P. ‘Mars, Arizona’, you’re still killer.
Winner: Black Dice - ‘Smiling Off’
Soulwax - ‘Another Excuse’ vs Nine Inch Nails - ‘The Hand That Feeds’
These two were also put out in the same year — 2005 was obviously a big one for the boys! And there are a lot of musical similarities too. Teamy has a favourite but says he wants Joe’s thoughts first. Joe is more of a NIN fan than he is a Soulwax fan, and he likes the idea of taking Trent Reznor and turning him into a disco crooner. Teamy conjures the image of a HUGE glitter ball descending over Trent’s head as he yells out the line “will you chew until it bleeds?” The Soulwax remix is full of so many satisfying noises — the congas, the vocoder — though Joe finds the opening section a little bit stop-start. It’s one of Teamy’s favourites and he wants it to get the recognition it deserves, but we agree that some of its appeal comes from stripping the original ‘NY Excuse’ of its fabulous vocals, which perhaps counts against the remix according to our criteria. On the NIN 12” there are a number of versions including a tripped-out dub and an instrumental, which suggests both the label (no less than Interscope) and The DFA were happy with all configurations. Teamy allows the NIN remix to go through, but under objection: the Soulwax instrumental is better and bangs in the club, but the Trent Reznor vocal swings it.
Winner: Nine Inch Nails - ‘The Hand That Feeds’
Round of 16: Group Four
J.O.Y. - ‘Sunplus’ vs Gorillaz - ‘Dare’
“Uh, Dare wins.” Teamy is in there like a shot. With all due respect to J.O.Y. — a seriously fun outlier — it’s never going to beat ‘Dare’. Teamy notes that ‘Dare’ is a remix in three parts and observes, somewhat brutally, that ‘Sunplus’ in its entirety cannot stand up to any single part of the Gorillaz remix. We’ll talk more about the latter in the next round, but for now it’s a “Sorry, Sunplus”.
Winner: Gorillaz - ‘Dare’
Goldfrapp - ‘Slide In’ vs The Chemical Brothers - ‘The Boxer’
Joe prefaces this match-up by saying it’s perhaps the most difficult in the second round, not for him (he has his favourite) but for Teamy, since Teamy gave ‘The Boxer’ one of his free passes through the first round. “What have I done?” despairs Teamy. “I am hoist by my own petard.” And looking into the future, he spies trouble up ahead in the shape of ‘Dare’, too. This is definitely the heavyweight section of the bracket, and Teamy compares it to Group B in the 2023 Rugby World Cup, otherwise known as the ‘group of death’, a reference that flies fully over Joe’s head but sounds very stressful, especially if you’re Scottish like Teamy. We relisten to both tunes. Although one of them is more club tempo and the other is a slower cosmic disco thing, they both belong to that ‘disco odyssey’ category of DFA remixes. Teamy says he put ‘The Boxer’ through round one because it’s so big, especially once the vocals fade out and that huge growly synth comes through (he speculates it’s a Yamaha CS 80, beloved by The DFA and Vangelis). The build up to that point and then the drop is utterly thrilling. As for ‘Slide In’, it’s a riot start to finish. Teamy remembers hearing it for the first time on an Optimo night at the Sub Club and rushing to ask for the ID - of course it was a DFA remix. But actually it’s not immediately obvious, being much tweakier than some of their more down-the-line outings. It also holds its own among the absolutely top tier catalogue of Goldfrapp remixes, Ewan Pearson’s own disco odyssey among them. We love ‘The Boxer’, but we have to put ‘Slide In’ through.
Winner: Goldfrapp - ‘Slide In’
And there we have it! 8 more remixes knocked out, 8 remain:
Join us in Part Three for the quarters, semis and grand finals! And as always, don’t hesitate to tell us if we’ve got it all wrong.