Virgo Four – Lites Go Out/Boing (remixes) review

With Caribou’s massive remix of Virgo Four’s “It’s A Crime” being undoubtedly one of 2011’s best and it must be said, ubiquitous tracks, it was always going to be difficult for Rush Hour to follow it up. Wisely, Rush Hour’s choices for this second round of remixes tread the slightly more esoteric side of house, sidestepping any attempt at trying to strike gold twice. Of course this doesn’t mean that these remixes from Capracara & Scott Fraser and Hieroglyphic Being respectively should be read as failures; if anything their dark qualities highlight the fact that, although undeniably effective, there was actually something slightly naïve about Caribou’s remix.

Capracara (aka Jonathan Burnip) is one of the UK’s most underrated house producers, and his rework (produced together with Scott Fraser), gives us another all too rare glimpse of the man’s uniquely skewed vision. The tracky quality of the original is quite similar to the excellent material Burnip has been producing for Unknown To The Unknown of late, and Burnip and Fraser take that element of the original and send it into a K-hole, adding an elongated, detuned acid synth which combines with the dusty drums and pitched down vocals to take the original into thrilling, but decidedly uneasy territory.

Of course, Burnip and Fraser’s effort is practically top 40 material next to the remix by Jamal Moss under his Hieroglyphic Being alias. While the original was one of Virgo Four’s deeper efforts, charaterised by its midnight blue chords, Moss’s remix opts to take the original’s name quite literally and transform the bassline into a bouncing rubber ball held together a dusty drum machine rattle. Hearing the warped slices of Virgo Four’s original production drifting through the double-time rhythms and lo-fi fuzz of Moss’s remix makes the whole thing sound like a house track in its death throes, creating a shambling mechanoid rework that should provide a great starting point for the uninitiated to explore Moss’s warped genius.

Scott Wilson