Billy Dalessandro - Polis The Remixes Vol. 2

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  • There's an area of melodic, tech-chiselled four-four in dance music that should be approached with care. It's the kind of stuff that aims for the heart via comfortable chord and bass progressions, but many come unstuck by lacking personality. Not so here. For the second of two remix packages from Billy Dalessandro's 2009 album Polis, the draftees have been well selected; they're holding various remix/release favours for each other already, but they're also on a similar wavelength. Despite building up alarm and pressure fairly competently in their effort here thanks to a tense bass drone and high-pitched bell tolls, Mobilee regulars Exercise One aren't able to craft something as individual as many of the tracks on their recent full-length In Cars We Rust. At the other end, there's Brian Ffar's tweak of "Alphasex," with the same pleasant daydream of a riff in the fore, but with more tightness and swing. He removes some of the delay and reverb to focus the riff, but raises the level in lesser proportion, keeping it just on the edge of perception. (It's a pretty unique subversion of common wisdom regarding placement of parts in the soundstage—often low volume is used with reverb to push things to the background.) A common feature throughout the tracks is the texture in the percussion, particularly the snares. It's great to hear such interesting choices for staple sounds. The Emsley and Expander remixes are good examples. In the first, it's manifested in a bizarre, quasi-military stomp and a nervous 303 twitch. In the second, it's largely down to the assortment of chiming Baoding balls in the second half of the track.
  • Tracklist
      01. Only Your Touch (Exercise One mix) 02. In the Red (Jason Emsley mix) 03. AlphaSex (Brian Ffar mix) 04. Acidburn (Expander mix)
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