Caribou’s Dan Snaith is a great remix candidate. The relentless studio tinkerer leaves a lot of process in his music, and his songs have an appealingly imperfect quality. It’s not that Caribou tracks feel unfinished; they’re more like breathing compositions than polished, flawless objects. This gives remixers a lot of room to maneuver– they can pick apart individual pieces of songs, expand on one especially interesting element, or even deconstruct the whole thing and start from scratch. And Swim is particularly ripe for reworking because it’s easily his clubbiest material to date.
Snaith has never been beholden to one genre and this set honors the exploratory nature of his work. All the artists included are beat-minded in some way, but they vary pretty wildly across the electronic music spectrum. There’s indie dance-pop (Walls, Nite Jewel), dubstep/funky (Ikonika), minimal techno (DJ Koze), experimental electronica (James Holden), and more. This healthy cross-section makes the album feel more relevant than similar remix comps, but also makes it a bit clunky. There are a ton of different ideas to internalize, and at 90 minutes, it’s just a lot of music to wade through.
Some of the best material comes from unlikely sources. Tucson unknown Altrice made his way onto the record by winning a remix competition, and his “Only What You Gave Me” mix of “Sun” is easily one of the best cuts. He flips the whole vibe of the track, taking it from skyward psych to a dark head-knodder riding over hip-hop breaks and distorted synths. Fuck Buttons, who took a step toward the floor last year with their monster Tarot Sport, continue in that direction by turning “Kaili” into pulsing house. Without even a hint of noise, the track doesn’t resemble much of their other work.
Elsewhere, Junior Boys knock out the best “Odessa” mix, and it’s great to hear them back in crisp, electro-funk form. Gold Panda does his tech-y, Eastern-tinged thing on “Jamelia”, and the UK’s Patten live up to their noise-dance hype with their “Sun” remix. Somewhere along the line, though, the record loses focus. Dudes you expect to deliver, like Holden and Koze, sprawl way too far out, and at least three other songs just feel unnecessary. With so much material, you almost start to forget about Caribou altogether, and the record becomes more valuable as a dance-cut grab bag than a reflection of the source material. That’s neither compliment nor criticism, just what happens when nothing gets edited out.