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 (Ninja Tune/Inertia)
Disturbingly old-fashioned MDMA-drenched dancefloor misery and premium quality videoclips from the rave age
Over the last two decades or so, Hexstatic have been responsible for injecting electronic music with some well-remembered innovations, most importantly the addition of quirky visuals to electronic live performances. With their background in graphic design, Stuart Hill and Robin Brunson have rarely been able to resist giving away eye-catching bonuses with their music releases. Unsurprisingly therefore, Videos Remixes Rarities includes both a CD and a DVD. A painful listen to the audio part of the album, which features unknown works from the past, makes you wonder why these old ravers couldn’t just be content with their memories of the good times they had on early nineties’ dance floors. The tracks on the album are without any exception, painfully out of date. We’re talking a carton of milk that’s been out in the December sun for a week. Tiresome one-dimensional breakbeats distastefully decorated with likewise acid bleeps, cheesy vocal electro-cuts and Chemical Brothers-like b-side housetunes, the misery doesn’t seem to come to an end. A failed attempt to liven things up with embarrassing sound effects, previously heard only on psy-trance gatherings, doesn’t help making things look rosier. Even Funkstörung’s Michael Fakesh, generally able to transform the greatest rubbish into a bombastic twisted funk anthem, happens to be incapable of saving the ass of these Ninja Tune superstars. Equally prehistoric, yet much more enjoyable, are the bits of everyday (animal, human and robot) life which are synchronized with Hexstatic’s music on the DVD. Vibrating carnivorous plants, kangaroos and frogs: they are all slaves to the rhythm. It seems to be the way Hill and Brunson fulfil their simultaneously rural and metropolitan desires. Apart from a few boring moments where nervous hands go over Roland drum machines, the DVD showcases mostly hilarious motion pictures in a style that’s well known to clubbers who are long settled down with kids and all. The highlight is the video of Coldcut’s Timber, which, as you may have guessed, explains how to extract and process the precious material. Musically, the DVD is of much higher quality than the songs on the CD, which were previously rare or unreleased for a reason. That may well be the greatest bonus in the package.
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CHRISTIAAN DE WIT
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