Editorial Reviews

The fourth volume in Verve's Verve Remixed series was a long time in coming considering how quickly the label spit out the first three. Nonetheless, it is a welcome addition to that shelf if remixes are your personal thang. This set concentrates, once more, on vocalists, and the array is rather startling on the surface, though it's sequenced beautifully. As with any of these packages some cuts work better than others, but there are some true highlights here. Marlena Shaw's reading of Ashford & Simpson's "California Soul" is given a killer treatment by Diplo and Mad Decent, keeping the entire thing rooted in its source material and stretching it with judiciously added bits of early funk, Ramsey Lewis-style soul-jazz, and hip-hop. Antibalas added a ton of organic percussion and loops and Afro-funk to Patato y Totico's Latin bruiser "Dilo Como Yo," just massing the entire proceeding into an orgy of soulful percussion and funky horns while keeping the Afro-Cuban root and Yoruba chant of the tune entirely intact. Kenny Dope does his usual thing on James Brown's "There Was a Time" -- and yeah, it works the breaks while jungle loops careen wildly underneath the J.B.'s strutting horns. The radical chop up on Astrud Gilberto's "Bim Bom" renders the track all but unrecognizable. Dense loops, African thumb pianos, and space age breaks on the back end clutter it up, but it's interesting to hear once. Considering Verve Remixed, Vol. 4 as a whole, however, this volume succeeds simply because technology and perspective have changed so much since the earlier volumes were released. Even on the stuff that doesn't work so well, it does have a far warmer, more organic feel, as if the remix producers were able to actually collaborate on the tune as co-creators of something really new rather than simply updating them. Thom Jurek, All Music Guide

Customer Reviews

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