Signal Path Remixes

This Denver trio has caught my ear in the past with their lively electronically twisted brand of rock music. Having sluffed on catching them at least twice out here I’d stopped listening until I saw an announcement for their latest release, a remix/mash up album titled MixtaEP.

It’s six songs, but for our purposes we will be focusing on only three. Those discarded might be your lane, but I just didn’t vibe to them.

It’s the opening track, and a connection to home. Shabazz is steadily catching exposure and seeing the world appreciate it’s presence. Signal Path snag “Swerve” off Black Up and lay some funky synths and hollow electric drums which coincide with the bass line well. The original song is in there, making it obvious they didn’t receive any files of the original to work with. Even still, the band demonstrates a technical skill at merging what they do have with their own fitting melodies. It’s an interesting approach to remixing and proves quite energetic.

Next up be the young and fun duo Main Attrakionz out of Oakland. Being a huge fan I might be biased, but I think this is the best of the remixes on this project. The credits on Signal Path’s site state that this is a mashup between the MA cut “Vegetables” and a song by Modeselektor. I’m unfamiliar with the later but the raps are Squadda and Mondre.

Where their original track featured an intensely grating beat that you only wanted to hear finish yet at the same time would be forced to move to with it’s fast pace and compelling groove frustrated me to no end, here we are put at ease a little bit with a much more smooth overall beat. The anxiety generating nature of the first is still hidden underneath I assume to be the Modeselektor track. The elements compliment and mesh well evening out and generating a much more West Coast G Funk vibe for a song that was anything but. If you need to get motivated this morning, blast this.

The final remix from the project I’m going to speak on is the most interesting to my ear, and confusing. It features my favorite song off the latest Roots album as the largest base piece of music. They lay down some vocals from the Sleigh Bells and loop up the intro from “Peso” – the ASAP Rocky hit. As the Roots song (“Sleep”) grows into Black Thoughts verse the “Peso” loop vanishes and the Sleigh Bells vocals appear chopped intermittently.

“Peso” returns this time acting as the hook. And the loop returns as the Root’s hook then plays out. Black Thought’s last verse is chopped up and never allowed to finish. The exit from “Peso” comes in and functions as the close to this track. It’s a lot going on with an assortment of good songs. I don’t mean for my description to turn you off, rather to capture the complexity of what it is these guys did. It all works out and sounds pretty damn cool. I would love to drop this in a club and fuck with people’s heads as they expect “I be that pretty muthafucka” to come booming across the speakers but instead get the General dropping knowledge. The Sleigh Bells vocal snippets are just a perfect cherry on top.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 25th, 2012 at 4:58 am. It is filed under Blog, Reviews and tagged with ASAP Rocky, Denver Music, Main Attrakionz, Modeselektor, Shabazz Palaces, Signal Path, Sleigh Bells, The Roots, theesatisfaction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.