Last great track: Amanda Brown
Amanda Brown runs the LA-based record label Not Not Fun alongside her husband Britt Brown. Together they put out records of rich, dense psychedelia by the likes of Ducktails, Dolphins Into The Future, Psychic Reality and Sun Araw. She also makes her own brilliant, thick, dub sounds as LA Vampires, last year collaborating with Zola Jesus and Matrix Metals. Recently, she launched the 12” dance imprint 100% SILK which has so far seen releases by Ital and The Deeep. In light of this, she considers the remix.
The Whitest Boy Alive – Done With You (Sanchez Last Stand Remix) [Mob Beats]
Listen here.
“In 1994, I was a bored eighth grader browsing the IMPORT racks at Tower Records for obscure UK PJ Harvey CDs hoping to find the non-existent tracks I only imagined Polly Jean was releasing for the coolies across the pond. Instead, all I found were CD singles of songs I already owned and a jumble of live or stripped down demo takes. Boo. And it was worse with Bjork, hers were all remixes – a concept which confused me, and because it confused me, also pissed me off. I didn’t want someone touching my favorite Post tracks, least of all some glitchy Euro dude who made brilliant Bjork sound like her itch was being scratched on a silver hi-tek turntable. No. So to pretend to have always been down for the remix, to act like I’ve always even understood the point – the wholly other-ness – of the remix would be a lie, and worse, a misrepresentation of that awesome eighth grade girl who once spent 17 dollars just to get a digipak of 5 only slightly different versions of Big Time Sensuality. But that was 1994, and now it’s 2011; I run a record label called 100% SILK that specializes in disco, dance, acid, trance, etc, and, therefore, the REMIX. And that’s what I want to talk about here, in this column, for at least a little while.
This LAST GREAT TRACK is a remix of The Whitest Boy Alive’s “Done With You” by Sanchez Last Stand, which I first heard playing in San Francisco’s amazing Groove Merchant record shop. I just told the guy working there, “You have to take this record off the player right now and sell it to me for seven bucks.” (It’s that kind of fearlessness I pride myself on – I hate when people act like they’ve already heard of everything; YOU HAVEN’T). The thing that makes this an ultimate remix for me is that I know nothing of the original track and don’t at all care to – I just want the song to exist as this particular version: dubby, empty, repetitive, sprawling. Drum machine music without drum machines? No synths? That’s almost brilliant. Through Sanchez’ hands the mix feels like one extended thought, endless, like vintage Stereolab in their best bursts, almost kraut. Obviously it’s inexcusable to call your band The Whitest Boy Alive, and just as obviously, it’s bizarre to go by Sanchez Last Stand. And the record comes in a blank sleeve, and the center label is a total turn-off. Sigh, thus the artless world of remix records. But I digress – which is easy to do while listening to this atmospheric track. I’m listening to it now, in fact, looking out the window at the backdrop quality of a beautiful Northeast LA mountain range, while Britt reads silently on the couch, and it’s an absolutely perfect moment. So pleasant it’s bordering on precious. But if I went to bars I’d want to hear this remix at bars, and if I had a dentist, I’d like to hear it in that dentist’s office, and if the radio ever played a song for humans and not just robots tallying demographics and trends, then I’d love to hear it there. For the full eleven minutes.
(Now that we’re on the subject though, there’s an insane pee-yr-pants-good Goldie remix of Isobel that would’ve whipped my 13-year-old head around. Music from my DREAMS.)”
