Bloc Party - Intimacy Remixed

Intimacy Remixed

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1. Ares - Villains Remix
2. Mercury - Hervé Is In Disarray Remix
3. Halo - We Have Band Dub Remix
4. Biko - Mogwai Remix
5. Trojan Horse - John B Remix
6. Signs - Armand Van Helden Remix
7. One Month Off - Filthy Dukes Remix
8. Zephyrus - Phase One Remix
9. Talons - Phones RIP Remix
10. Better Than Heaven - No Age Remix
11. Ion Square - Banjo or Freakout Remix
12. Letter To My Son - Gold Panda Remix
13. Your Visits Are Getting Shorter - Double D Remix


This is actually pretty good. I haven't really been excited about anything Bloc Party have done since......Silent Alarm really. It also perhaps speaks volumes that they didn't even bother to have a remixed album of A Weekend In The City, and cut straight to their third album, reinforcing my belief that the producer for their second album (Jack Knife Lee) is a spo and has ruined several of my favourite bands.

While Intimacy was a bit of an improvement on AWITC, it was still a bit of a halfway house. You can't open with the neo apocalypctic rave of Ares and have the most Banquet sounding song since Banquet (One Month Off) sitting comfortably in the same room, really. Intimacy Remixed, then, is really what Intimacy should have been. The band have made no secret about wanting to go all electro on us, so just get on with it. Having said that, these remixes are obviously by other people, but the source material's there.

Ares - Villains Remix is simply Ares cranked up a notch. It takes the moodiness of the original and cranks everything up. The building electronics and thumping bass makes this track amazing, and Intimacy Remixed immediately has your attention. A bit like a Death From Above remix, the waxy bassline is a whole heap of fun, and the provocative lyrics of "Get out of the way, or get fucked up" make this a great choice to stick on if you plan on getting in a fight tonight.
The remix of Mercury sounds a lot more natural, oddly, with a heap of electronics and keyboards wacked on top of it. It certainly didn't make me cringe upon first listen as the original did. The thick bass and drums make you feel as if you should be raving under a bridge, but it's still a lot of fun, and is a lot easier to listen to than the original was. This is how this song should have turned out, minus the lolwut brass section of the original.
The rework of Halo is a lot more reserved than anything else on the album, and has a few charming blips and blops. The faced paced guitars of the original have been stripped away in favour of swirling vocals and a nearly dream pop esque bassline.

Mogwai let me down. Biko hasn't changed spectacularly, and is still moody and forlorn, which is probably why Mogwai got to remix it, but it's still not very original. It's barely changed really, and if you didn't know who was remixing it you probably wouldn't be able to churn out a guess, save for "Someone boring". Think I might stick to the original. Trojan Horse is....haha....great. It really does make you feel like a moke listening to it though, as you are instantly transported to a Ministry of Sound gig in the Odyssey Arena. There's a real darkness to it though, it's cless.

Theres a lot of flac up until the Talons remix, which, being done by someone who's been remixing Bloc Party since about half an hour after they formed, should be good. It is, and leads nicely onto the intense No Age remix of Better Than Heaven, the duo doing themselves proud here. There's something strangely enjoyable about the Letter To My Son remix. It's quite idiosyncratic and charming, and at parts downright odd. It's very nice, actually (Poet Laureate here I come).
Your Visits Are Getting Shorter plays the album out nicely, parts of it which might not sound out of place on Royksopp's latest. Perhaps. Certain bits of this also sound like they could be taken from a record by The Field (Check him out- minimal techno ftw).

The album isn't perfect, there's a lot of songs here that are just remixes by numbers. One thing's for certain though, if you're at a party and it's the sort of crowd that like the new Kings of Leon record but haven't heard of Squarepusher, this will be an instant pleaser. No effort, stick this on, let party and drinking commence. Some remixes here do what a good remix should : either speed up the original and make it sound more badass, (Ares, Mercury)
or transform the original into something completely different altogether (Halo, Better Than Heaven). That's not to say that there's only 4 good songs on this, not at all, and it's still probably the best electronic album i've heard so far this year. Sadly that isn't saying a lot, but there are suprising moments of originality and idiosyncracy in this record that ensure it's an improvement upon the original in many ways.


Intimacy 2.0

7.5/10