Around New Year’s I was showing a friend some other MP3 blog that shares remixes and b-sides. You know the one.
He agreed with me that it was totally lame that said MP3 blog not only shared tracks that are easily commercially available (sometimes on new vinyl even), but that the person behind the blog couldn’t even be bothered to do their own write-up about said tracks. I mean, it’s one thing to hook up a turntable to a PC, go through the sometimes arduous process of ripping a record to a digital format, cleaning it up, and then sharing it on the internet. It’s another to, let’s say, grab a rightfully forgotten piece of 90s electronica, rip it to a digital format, clean it up, properly tag it, upload it to a server that you paid for, and then write about said rightfully forgotten song.
That shit takes gumption.
Aerosmith
Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees) (Butcher Mix)
Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees) (Butcher Mix Edit)
Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees) (Moby Flawed Mix)
Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees) (Moby Fucked Mix)
Whhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhy.
Okay, first things first, there are four remixes here. The first two are by Joe “The Butcher’ Nicolo, the founder of Ruffhouse Records. They’re good examples of your standard remix. They take the basic structure of the song, mix it up a bit, throw in a few more beats, and add some other dance elements. They’re fine. I mean, they’re as fine as remixes to very sub-standard late-90s Aerosmith track can get, but whatever. They are what they are and they accomplish what they set out to accomplish.
Then, there’s the Moby remixes.
What the fuck.
I’m not surprised that Moby remixed these songs. This isn’t an 808 State/Yes situation. He was doing a lot of remix work for rock artists in the mid-to-late 90s. This was around the same time he did remix work for The Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, Blur, and even Metallica. I’m more surprised with how he remixed them. I don’t think it’s really fair to even call these tracks remixes. I think the only thing he saves from the original versions in his remixes are Tyler’s vocals, and he even cuts and screws them to an (even more) unintelligible mess. These are less remixes and more like entirely new productions that just happen feature vocals by Steven Tyler with some short snippets of Perry’s guitar. They remind me Moby’s “Next To The E” or some of the more hardcore remixes of “Go.”
To be perfectly honest, I really don’t know what to think of them. I respect that they’re just so far out there and removed from the source material. He basically took an Aerosmith song (and not a very good one at that) and turned it into a hardcore techno track. I got to give props where props is due, that’s ballsy. But this is just grating on the ears. I thought for a second that maybe I was just getting too old for this shit, but I took a minute to listen to some other hardcore techno from the era and I still dug it. This is just too much. It’s too noisy, too much is going on, and the ballistic Tyler vocals snippets layered over it (especially over the “Fucked” mix) are just too intense.
But I still find myself respecting the tracks. He took a bad rock song and, through sheer force, determination and drum samples, turned it into a…less-than-average-but-not-entirely-horrible techno track. A techno track that, had I heard it in a club in 1997, I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it and danced right through it. Good on him. Shit, it’s still better than anything on Aerosmith’s Just Push Play, and definitely superior to anything on the last few Moby records.
Sorry to start the new year off with Moby remixes of Aerosmith songs. I had something much better planned but my recordings still sound a bit too scratchy for my tastes. I’m going to run the record through the record cleaner one more time and hope for better results before I share them. I also have just, a near-literal ton of weird Japanese electronic and/or moog albums that I want to share, so you all have that to hopefully look forward too in the coming weeks and months.