Any song that meets the required benchmark the first time around is a song robust and interesting enough to undergo remixing. And if one remix of a track seems like a good idea, many remixes are, surely, better. That is the philosophy behind A Permanent View, an extensive collection of remixes of some of the songs found on Attrition’s 2024 album, The Black Maria. The album’s questioning title even references the transient nature of the music.
No song is ever really finished, and any recording is just the version captured on the day. The best way for any song to live life to the fullest is for others to pick up the sonic pen and continue writing its story, which is precisely what we have here. Such is the expansive nature of the album, both in the number of tracks it contains and the way they unfold, exploring the dark corners of the music map; all the reviewer can do is allude to the deftness and creativity at work in brief, so here we go…
Take a song like “The Great Derailer,” for example; here it is, in turn, rendered into a dark digital dance groover, a gnashing electro-rock anthem, complete with ethereal interludes, an operatic darkwave-disco track, orchestral drum and bass, neon-lit, euphoric nightclub energies, Batcave nostalgia, futuristic ambient exploration, searing white noise and an industrial echo from the edge of the third circle of hell. Phew! And that’s just the possibilities found in just one of the four songs featured on this 20-track album.
Yes, songs never have a logical conclusion; they are always able to find a new lease of life, take on new forms, and break their original mold, but rarely have songs been allowed such split personalities and ushered into so many myriad forms as they do here.
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