When FatCat were offered the chance to put together a series of remixes for One Little Indian artist Emiliana Torrini, it stimulated such lively thought and debate in the office that it seemed foolish not to take the project on.
Whilst some might argue that the ethics of re-producing a ‘pop record’ is not exactly true to the spirit of FatCat, after hearing the results, we have to disagree. Credit has to go to Emiliana for firstly asking us to curate the project, and then for her openness in accepting it without attempting to impose any generic / creative restrictions on either label or artist.
From the start, the project was seen as a way in which we could incorporate the wide variety of musical styles that FatCat has continuously embraced since its formation as a label.
The seventeen tracks shift and jump from the lush strings and slow-burning beat of Chasm, to Team Doyobi’s quirky, choppy video-game slice of electronix; Motion’s low-end, freeze-frame ambience; Grain’s pumping, floor-filling drive; the stabbing syncopations of Process’ minimalist Cologne-style funk; V/Vm’s staggering, rippling layers of digital noise; and Di Lacuna or Immense’s guitar-based instrumentation.
Another point of interest lies in the variety of approaches that artists have brought to bear on the project - from those sympathetic to the spirit of Emiliana’s original text, to those that fly off at their own tangents, and others that mercilessly ambush and mutilate; those who weave their own parts - or even samples from others - amongst a clutch of re-worked samples.
Ultimately this project took the form of a series of eight limited edition 7’ sleeves all visually remixed from Emiliana’s original sleeves by Obsessive Eye and Alex Torrance and all feeding in to the critically acclaimed and purpose built e-rmx site. Created by FatCat’s very own WebCat, the site attempted to grapple with the evolution, scope and significance of remixology. It included a fully downloadable copy of Simon Reynold’s text ‘The Science of Remixology’.
