MUSCLE, BONE & BLOOD (AMMONCONTACT REMIX)
Mia Doi Todd
Ninja: Armor and Other Dreams of Manzanita
Plug Research : 2006
[Buy It]

MUSHABOOM (POSTAL SERVICE REMIX)
Feist
Open Season
Arts & Crafts : 2006
[Buy It]

BRIDGES & BALLOONS POCKET MIX
Joanna Newsom
Check out more "pocket mixes" at http://www.music-by-pocket.com/

Everything from the Rapture to LCD Soundsystem -- which doesn't represent as wide a range as the formulation implies, but in the words of the immortal bard, "whatever" -- has been touted as "teaching indie kids to dance." On paper, this sounds great. Dancepunk and indie-electro stuff seemed like the Internet did in those idealistic early days, when it was heralded as a great populist force. But just as the Net shaped up into little more than a massive porn-delivery portal, it soon came to light that teaching indie kids to dance wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Less of a liberation, more of a teaching-blind-kids-to-fence sort of thing, with just as much wild thrusting and accidental laceration. But here, I'm just being funny; what really riles my ire is the contingent of pasty ghouls who stubbornly refuse to join the melee, standing like slack-jawed statues in the front row of LCDSS shows and getting testy if you spill a little beer on them. Anyway, there's more than one way to teach an indie kid to move, and if you really wanna see the little fuckers shuffling and jerking in some grotesque parody of dancing (god, I'm kidding, relax), don't just throw some disco shuffle beats behind post-punk guitars - use their favorite ethereal indie pop as the source material. Of course when I say "their," I also mean "my" - "Bridges & Balloons" and "Mushaboom" are both very close to my black, black heart. In both instances, the remixes themselves are just average, and what makes them work is the strength of the source material and the thrill of hearing it so drastically yet winningly recontextualized. The "Bridges & Balloons" pocket mix is no great shakes from a technical standpoint, employing a series of stock maneuvers to potent effect, transforming Newsom's billowing harp strings into compact bits of rhythm. And Dntel basically sleepwalks through "Mushaboom", falling back on the exact same, warm glitch and burble he deploys on every Postal Service song, but the idiom is refreshed by the lovely Leslie Feist's presence. An opposite transaction happens in Ammoncontact's remix of Mia Doi Todd's barely-there chamber dirge "Muscle, Bone & Blood" -- the quietly inert original comes to life with this sorely-needed dynamic injection.