In the 80’s, remixes were what the music business used to repackage and resell the same record to the same audience. In the modern world, they have become something purer, much more about music and little to do with business.
Remixes, especially when, as is the case on Kallai’s reworking of the debut album, We Are Forever, put into the hands of others, remind us that a song’s story is never really finished, not if people don’t want it to be. It reminds us that what ended up on the original recording was just one iteration of what the song is, and that with other hands, other minds, other imaginations at work, we get glimpses of other lives the song might have had, and indeed now does live.
The Stargaze Lilies push “The Hymn/The Beautiful Ones” into lush and blissed out dream pop territory, the vocals a half-heard intimate whisper, the music formless and floating, and by contrast, “Protector,” in the hands of Sad Goth Girl is spacious and brooding, crashing and clashing.
“Always/Never,” Kallai’s debut single, becomes a shimmering, light-filled space and then a denser, darker, and more immersive experience thanks to Hey Playgirl and Calliere, respectively. Similarly, twin adventures are found for “As Night Falls”: Reclaimed, using it to forge ethereal dance anthems; boredom & Romance, treating it to a run through blasted and broken Bauhausian intrigue.
It’s a brave thing for an artist to do, handing their sonic children over for another reshape, reimagine, and rerecord. But it is all about how precious an artist is about their work, and, as this album proves, the rewards outweigh the risks.
There is also something to be read into the album’s names, although I may be just making things fit the narrative after the event. But if We Are Forever might say something about the longevity of music, Forever Could Never Be might be suggesting that such longevity only comes if that music can move with the times. And what is a remix album if it is not the process by which music does exactly that?
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