I Break Horses - Remix EP

After garnering some deserved attention and admiration with their cut-above take on the whole spooky 80s synth-pop thing, Sweden’s I Break Horses have broken out the remixes with this new EP. It’s a bit of a strange one, since all but one of the tracks is a remix of their best number, ‘Faith’. It’s a bit like those fan-fleecing CD singles which clogged up the racks of HMV and Virgin in the 90s, before MP3s kicked the music industry in the nuts and made off with its wallet and coke.

Of the four takes on ‘Faith’, The Field’s remix stretches out the intro to near-infinity, delivering an almost vocal-less, matric yet murky version. It’s decent but a bit too wallpaper-y. The ‘Clarence Clarity Hijack’, meanwhile, backs up its wonderful name by being the most inventive. It’s fluttery and psychedelic but also a little annoying, speeding up halfway for some sort of gabba/hair metal workout for no good reason. That said, the sudden jolts and gurgling halts Clarence works in, like a smackhead nodding out, are inventive and in keeping with the spirit of the original.

The biggest name here is Mr Tom Fuse from those Horrors lads. His remix is typically excellent, playing with dubstepy atmospherics and ping-pong beats. It’s the best remix here but perhaps it’s also, like his day-job’s current music, a little too slick.

Finally, there’s the ‘Faith’ remix by Stereolab side-project Cavern of Anti-Matter and ‘Medicine Bush’ remixed by East India Youth, both which are perfectly good but not massively interesting. The latter sounds like early Goldfrapp, which is nice; the former doesn’t sound like Stereolab, which is a shame.