Au Revoir Simone: Reverse Migration

Au Revoir Simone
Reverse Migration
Our Secret Record Company

‘Reverse Migration’ is a track for track remix of Au Revoir Simone’s debut album- ‘The Bird of Music’. It’s always difficult to review a remix album without referring to the original. Like a teenager on holiday with their parents- should the remix stand awkwardly to one side and pretend that it has nothing to do with its begetter, or should it proudly flaunt its roots, and admire how much it’s grown?

Slow Club’s remix of ‘The Lucky One’ opens up the record. The track begins as a straightforward cover, and then descends into typical Slow Club kids-at-the-playground-eating-lots-of-sweets noisiness. ‘Sad Song’ is remixed twice- once by Pacific, and once by Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor. Both mixes add in a male vocal near the end, turning a solo song of heartache into a Danny/Sandy duet for Brooklynites, and in doing so, kind of miss the point of the original track.

The remixes that work the best are ones that focus on the essence of the originals. Keith Murray destroys ‘Don’t See the Sorrow’- without the regulating drum machine of the original track, and coupled with Murray’s busker schtick, it becomes earnest, instead of sincere. Alexis Taylor’s eight minute remix of ‘Sad Song is detached and clinical, rather than fragile and downbeat. However, Matt Harding’s masterful remix of ‘Night Majestic’ is a sparse, post-punk rendering of one of the poppiest tracks on the original album, while Mark- Anthony Tieuku creates a jerky, disjointed track from ‘The Way to There’- one that Roisín Murphy wouldn’t say no to. The Darkel mix of ‘I Couldn’t Sleep’ is smashing. A heavy synthy bassline coupled with glitchy production, it’s slinky and seductive- a stone thrown at a window, asking for a late-night conversation.

While ‘Reverse Migration’ is not a filler album, per se; it serves as a neat reflection on Au Revoir Simone’s strengths and weaknesses as songwriters. It’s a photograph’s negative- not quite the real thing, only a shadow of it, through which the original can be made out, almost.