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version 4: october 15, 2008. almost there… stay on target…

MP3: Inquiet – Rose Rose (Faux Pas remix – v4)

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see also: version 1 | version 2 | version 3

version 3: october 4, 2008. four days later.

MP3: Inquiet – Rose Rose (Faux Pas remix – v3)

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see also: version 1 | version 2

version 2: september 30, 2008. five days later. i sit down for another couple of hours. cue the four to the floor.

MP3: Inquiet – Rose Rose (Faux Pas remix – v2)

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inquiet is a lovely chap named sam who founded melbourne’s rad diy label brothersister records with a bunch of his talented friends. i asked sam if i could remix a song from the record that he just put out – which is called “inq beyong”, by the way, and is really accomplished and good – and he said sure, so thats one of the things i’ve been working on lately.

i thought i’d do something new here on the blog, something i haven’t done before. its probably pretty obvious listening to the end result, but my music is iterations on iterations on iterations. thats not unusual, and potentially not very interesting either.. but lets see anyway. i keep a pretty good record of the way songs mutate as i work on them. my creative process with music is very much, um, every couple of days throw some new shit at the wall, and eventually you end up with a wall covered in shit, and hopefully it sticks and starts to smell rosy. often its just shit.

ANYWAY over the next couple of weeks i’m going to post up five different versions of my inquiet remix, starting with the results of my very first sit-down with the project, and then ending with a “finished product”… as finished as anything i do ever is (here’s a hint: it never is). not to say that i’m the wizard of oz, but this does feel a bit like opening the curtain and letting you see my hideous inner workings – its not necessarily pretty but maybe someone will appreciate it. it might be interesting to track where the different parts of the song move in each iteration, hear some of the differences in the mixing and arrangement as the track changes, and get a bit of an idea of how i work. that is, if you are a massive nerd.

ok. so, lets start with – version 1: september 25, 2008, which is about a month ago. i’ve been listening to sam’s record for a couple of weeks since its release and getting really excited about wanting to play with some parts. so i sit down for a couple of hours, record some guitar, dig out some samples, and this comes together.

MP3: Inquiet – Rose Rose (Faux Pas remix – v1)

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note to self: don’t send copy of new faux pas album to the age.

“son, we don’t take kindly to your folk around here…. jimmy, pass me the new kings of leon”

the negative review of qua’s new record that appeared in last friday’s age is an absolute shocker: dismissing one of melbourne’s more humble and unassuming musicians as a “3065-postcode hipster“; equating his virtuosic production and composition to that of a “14-year old kid with a Mac“; and more or less saying that his album sucks because it doesn’t sound like Air or Daft Punk.

this is probably the kind of thing that should just be left alone – perhaps it’d be best for this review to simply be something for cornel (qua) and his mates to chuckle about, and then move on and forgetabout it. and don’t get me wrong i like critical reviews, even of my favourite records. but they have to be a lot more thoughtful than this.

the thing is, for me, this review is symptomatic of the australian mainstream music media’s lack of respect for music that actually pushes the boundaries a little. i used to think it was a bad thing that most of the country’s more interesting music gets ignored by the mainstream music press – now i’m beginning to wonder whether its better to be ignored. note to music editors: if your reviewers don’t understand “electronic music”, and if this is how you’re going to write-up one of the more respected electronic producers in the country – then please just leave it well enough alone. we can continue to play amongst ourselves and you guys can keep lauding the fashionable haircut rockers, shallow synth-pop combos, and heartbroken singer-songwriters.

what worries me most is that this might be the first time many age readers have heard of qua – and its a horrible and completely out-of-line (if mercifully brief) representation of him and his music. make your own mind up about qua at http://myspace.com/quamusic

the review can be read over at the to and fro blog, where you can also read an elegant dressing down of the review from my radio cohort dave, along with (more of!) my two cents.

and yes, these are just the personal rants of a couple of emotionally invested dudes who want to stick up for a guy whose music they like. we’re just mouthing off, but hey, thats what blogs are for. perhaps next time a reviewer decides to write a review that basically amounts to a not-so-thinly veiled attack on a kind of music they simply don’t like, they should consider blogging about it instead. we expect more considered responses from professionals.