Temper Trap, The - Conditions - Remixed (Album)
» The Temper Trap Return with Self-Titled Album, First Single 'Need Your Love' Out March 27! - March 8, 2012
» Big Day Out 2010 - Claremont Showgrounds, WA - January 31, 2010
» Big Day Out 2010 - Royal Adelaide Showground, SA - January 29, 2010
» The Temper Trap get spicy - June 23, 2009
The Temper Trap won an ARIA for Best Group this year. Their debut album Conditions won them accolades all over the place. Conditions - Remixed proves you can’t win ‘em all.
It’s a remixing of the original material from Conditions by a number of producers. Ten songs, ten producers, ten styles. It’s like being stuck in an elevator with loud strangers. It probably seemed a clever idea to give Conditions - Remixed the same track listing as the original record, or maybe it was never discussed (?!), but either way it makes for an incoherent collection of songs with varying palatability.
It’s not all awful, it’s just hit and miss, with musical experiments and dance floor-fillers side by side. Love Lost (Sister Bliss and Rollo Mix) becomes irritating five minutes in with two more minutes left on the clock, Rest cleverly blends some of the original instrumentation with new noise while toying with Dougy Mandagi’s voice, Sweet Disposition bops along nicely but then Down River is all glow sticks and robots...
Mandagi’s voice is remarkably versatile, floating blissfully unaware wherever it is cut and pasted, but the strength of The Temper Trap has always been the mix of angelic vocals and pulsating rhythms and grand guitars. Without those soaring guitars and driving drums, The Temper Trap lose their Temper Trap-ness. They become an amazing voice in a room full of blips and loops and noise. It’s like throwing out the roast and drinking the gravy.
But it’s more the remix phenomenon that is the root of the problem. Nobody would re-shoot an entire feature film using different lead actors for the same character, changing backdrops for each scene (“For this next scene, Middle Earth will be a 1970s hospital emergency ward and Frodo will be a black guy...”) so the remix concept is curious from the outset. Remix albums are almost always for the fans; for when you want a little more of a good thing. Seriously, who would buy a remix before the original record?
Conditions was atmospheric and dreamy, it rose and it fell and it carried you. Conditions - Remixed juts erratically this way and that for ten tracks and it becomes tiring. Conditions worked - and some of the remixes here work too - but a record that vacillates between man and machine for ten tracks becomes a battle nobody wins.
Some great remixes. Some average. Shoulda been a bonus disc.
