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Applied Remixes

For their latest release the Sheffield-based musical duo Application have enlisted the help of some of their favourite acts. Each artist was given the freedom to remix a track of their choosing from Application's full-length System Fork. The results are an interesting mix of robotic grooves, ambient textures and glitchy electronics.

Applied Remixes opens with ‘Front End’, remixed by Pye Corner Audio. It starts with a crackle of mechanical noise while other sounds slowly emerge. A repetitive chord section gradually appears as the drum beat gets underway. This is followed by ‘Flange 7’ (remixed by Beneath) and ‘Siren’ (remixed by Geiom). Both Beneath and Geiom bestow the music with an aggressive edge with blunt and direct percussion, the latter also adding a wobbling LFO.

Application themselves then remix ‘Swuth’ by condensing its running time and giving it a more punchy and incisive feel. Scanner has created a successful version of ‘Ambient B’ that perhaps betters the original, softening a lot of the electronic noise that clouds the original with deep reverb and delay and mixing in some light percussion to add weight.

Electronic music can be enlightening and invigorating, but also aggravating. This is the problem with the last two remixes. For ‘Cron Job’ and ‘Steve Reich’s Ice Cream Van’, both Russell Haswell and Mark Fell have stripped away a lot of the densely layered effects. This makes the tracks seem very dry and minimal. They can't be faulted for wanting to impart their own character but, the final results seem jarring and disjointed.