Although chiefly known as the drummer in Slowdive for their first two albums, Simon Scott has been extremely active in music in recent years. In the past twelve months alone, he has recorded two further Televise albums and now runs his own label, KESHHHHHH Recordings. The crowning glory of his post-Slowdive career has been the 2006 album ‘Songs To Sing In A & E’; a triumphant alternative pop album which did much to dissuade any claims that he was resting on his shoegazing past. So here’s the belated remix album which features contributions from some fine talent and alternative versions of all but one of the offerings from ‘Songs To Sing In A & E’, as well as a track each from the last two albums.
Ulrich Schnauss - one of the key performers in the current crop of dreampop exponents - lends a suitably lush amount of layers to ‘Radiation Sound’. Scott has teamed up with Anthony Ryan to record as Seavault in recent times and the latter does great service to ‘Underwater’ under his Isan identity; here, Ryan emphasises Scott’s vocal strength whilst complementing him with hypnotic drum loops. Others, such as Library Tapes and Yellow6, experiment admirably but also end up detracting from the songs’ original melodies. Credit to Praveen though, for condensing the 15-minute original of ‘Never Alone’ to a significantly shorter folktronica instrumental.
Of course the question to ask is whether this a necessary purchase for anyone but fans of the original album? Most of the contributions are interesting diversions but they don’t tend to improve the originals and lead me to believe that ‘From Anywhere To Anyone’ would be best released as a companion CD to the original album, thereby introducing those latecomers to a great album they missed first time around.
Web Sites:
Televise MySpace
KESHHHHHH Recordings
Further Listening:
Ulrich Schnauss, Yellow6, Isan
0 Responses to “Review: Televise – From Anywhere To Anyone Remixes”