I’m Trying To Be Normal But There’s Evil In My Head

Architecture In Helsinki “Hold Music (Max Tundra Remix)” – Given the explosion in remixing over the past decade, I reckon we’re at the point where something like 98% of all remixes are totally unlistenable and awful. The bad remixes are usually either glitchy, self-indulgent garbage that amounts to some idiot making some terrible new composition out of fragments of the source material, or someone taking the source material and finding a way to dumb it down or otherwise strip it of its original appeal. Max Tundra’s Architecture In Helsinki remix is one of the 2% that get it right. His somewhat cartoonish style is immediately apparent, but it doesn’t eclipse the personality of Architecture In Helsinki or their song: The two aesthetics blend harmoniously, as if they had collaborated on writing and arranging the tune from the start. Tundra did nothing to change the basic structure of “Hold Music” — pretty much everything that worked well in the song is intact — but he adds more color and bolder dynamic shifts to the arrangement. The result is bouncy and restless, and filled with a nearly overwhelming variety of textures. Better yet, Tundra makes some sense of the title by setting the chorus sections to bits that actually sound like hold music. (Click here to buy it from Polyvinyl Records.)