Could someone please explain the current fad for bands to offer seemingly hundreds of remixes instead of actual songs? I am not a huge fan of remixes to begin with, and recently they seem neverending. So many singles have remixes as B-sides as opposed to new songs or even the live versions with which the buying public was previously fobbed off. As I understood it people bought singles for the new songs or hard-to-find live versions of established favourites. Are remixes still an incentive for people to fork out about £4 for three songs? Soft Cell's remixes are scary although good, Jack Off Jill's 'Covertous creatures' (remixes of the first album for the untainted among you) has its high points but there is a limit to how many times you can hear 'My cat' with minor changes, usually extended screatching, and still care.
Nine Inch Nails remixes are usually good. They fall in the minority catagory of remixes that highlight a different aspect of a song, which is nice. Cradle of Filth are somewhere between scary and funny although this statement applies whether the song is a remix or otherwise! I dare not meantion their videos, which while being quasi-porn are still more MTV-friendly than Danzig's latest offering.
At the other end of the spectrum you get Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit which are equally dire, although I am biased as I think the originals bite. Even the involvement of Jay Gordon can not save my sanity. Why do people think that getting some quasi-famous name to tinker with the mix and change the name to some text message garbage jargon will make a remix sound fresh and exciting. It just makes it seem like an overused hooker, trying to hide a multitude of flaws and sagging flesh behind a spadefull of makeup and a shiny cover. The Deftones remixed 'White Pony' album 'Back to school' finds itself condemed too. For some unknown reasons I bought it, and have listened to it all of twice. Upon playing it I begruded every penny although the video was unintentionally amusing if that helps.
At least I have yet to find the existance of a remixed Lollipop Lust Kill song, I think a bunch of rednecks playing at being goth is scary enough, but it is only a matter of time before the record company promises us the perpetual oxymoron that is a "new and improved" version of something old. Inevitably this will be 'Jesus Chrysler'.
Then you get stuff like Gravity Kills, a cross between hardcore and NIN, who issue a single with 8 remixes of 'Guilty' and 2 of 'Enough'. This seems a little bit much, especially considering all the versions of 'Guilty' sound the same and as of yet I can not tell the difference between 'Enough' and 'Guilty', so to me it really is 10 remixes of the same damn song.
