Junior Boys - The Dead Horse Ep

The title is ominous, but the remixes are not. This six track EP takes the breathy rnb house of the Junior Boys and lets Hot Chip, Carl Craig, Kode 9 and Tensnake loose on them, resulting in satisfying overhauls. It begins with the album versions of In the Morning and Like a Child, taken from the So This Is Goodbye album, a good reference point for examining how the tracks have mutated and changed. Hot Chip's Like a Child sounds like the Junior Boys on a crazed shabu session out to make fuzzy guitar synth pop: resplendent with drunk and tinny arpeggio synths: sections are over-laid for a compact piece, and they add their own vocals to carry the Hot Chip style. Carl Craig's minimal techy remix of the same track comes across as gothy electronica - think of The Cure born twenty years later. The repetitions of 'I'm like a child' are echoed into trance-house, cultivated for a straight to the dancefloor transition. Kode 9's mix of Double Shadow is a gently paced grimey dubstep monster, while Tensnake's FM mix adds the disco glam and electro house with bright, bouncing synth. [Alex Burden]