REM - "rem.IX"
REM - "rem.IX"
You get what you pay or - and since this free and downloadable from their website, it's worth what you pay for it. Nothing.
Rem.IX is a strange concept from what was once the world biggest rock band - a free, downloadable album of remixes based entirely on a handful of songs from their latest dud album. �Reveal� is the biggest of crimes really that any band can commit - an average album to a tried and tested formula. This then is an immeasurable improvement, with only the barest traces of the original remaining, and Stipe�s often heartrending vocals stripped away from the rest of the original music.However, Rem.IX, is hardly a success. It stutters and plods across a nonsensical tracklisting and a tedious amount of repetition : the middle 4 songs are all variations upon dull album track �I�ve Been High�, and each of the remixes seem rooted in decade-old styles, neglecting any musical developments since then in a series of boring, uneven variants. In an equally traditional style, the remixes endlessly repeat small select phrases from the vocals repeated ad nauseam over dull reworkings. Dull. Dull. Dull.
The potential of a free remix album is a great one : a chance to bring REM�s often stagnant but affecting style into the year 2002. And when the remixes work, (such as �The Lifting� and �I�ll Take The Rain� ), it shows an inventiveness, a greatness and dexterity that REM have only previously hinted at in the electronic-arena. But Rem:Ix is a 51 minute snoozefest - a curio, worth hearing once, but not really worth more than that.
Freed from the confines of the rock framework, Stipe�s vocals hang like a ghost over the album, and show him to be a vocalist far beyond the occasionally dull rock backing the rest of REM (whose services are admirably dispensed of here) provide. However by the fourth remix of the same dull LP track, with a dated approach to remixing, a handful of half-hearted dated rhythms (especially the clunking, predictable trip-hop take on �Summer Turns To High�), and early 90�s stylistic touches, Rem:IX can really only be seen as a charming altruistic gesture that fails on all artistic counts - and shows just how tantalising the possibilities of a vocalist like Micheal Stipe collaborating with groundbreaking electronic artists (such as, for example the Aphex Twin) are. So close, yet so far away, from true innovation.
Mixing one of the great vocalists with cutting edge electronic artists is a great idea. "rem:IX" isn't. If you suffer from insomnia, put it on. You'll be cured. It's that greatest of crimes any music can be : boring. Must try harder.
(c) Mark Reed, 1991-2002. Except where indicated.