Mortal Prophets - Meine Liebe (Lux Astralis)

If, like me, you have been around the sonic block more than a few times, you may remember the time of the 12” single and how the unscrupulous, mainstream record labels (are there any other kind?) used this new format as a way of getting us all to buy the same song over and over again, more or less. On it, you’d get a bunch of tracks – the original single, the shorter radio edit, the version with the more extended middle bit, the one with the guest vocalist and the dance mix. It was not only the same track four times, but it was pretty much the same as the 7” single you bought in the first place—no wonder they pretty much died a death.

But I get the feeling that had more people approached such a concept as smartly and interestingly as Mortal Prophets’ John Beckmann does on his latest release, “Meine Liebe,” the format may still be a going concern. Although this release is, on paper, an EP, it is essentially one song reimagined five times—not just reimagined, reworked, reinvented, remixed, re…well, re-everything.

After finding an old recording of a song by this name, which appears as the opening track on the EP, and subsequently being able to find out nothing about the artist behind it, he, along with producer David Sisko, set about building a whole new sonic narrative around the song.

The original is a strange blend of German opera and new wave electronica, with a production that sounds like the earliest of gramophone recordings, and this was their jumping-off point. “Weimar Tango” is the perfect echo of the original, a 1930s musical hall replica, all atmosphere and pathos, and from here, we are taken for a walk through an imagined musical history of the song, along a timeline that never happened. (Or did it?)

“Cologne 77” sets it in the European techno-clubs that forged bands like Kraftwerk all futuristic robotic music and strident beats, “Belgian Club 79” moves us into more familiar, post-disco, clubland grooves, “Trip-Hop” does what it says on the tin and “Titanic Last Waltz” sets it amongst the rising waves and sinking hopes of a sonic deluge.

This is what remixing, although it is much more than simply that, should be all about. The same song might be at the heart of everything found here, but each track gives it a new lease of life, a new narrative, a new place in (an alternative) history, a new reason for existence, a new chance to breathe again. That’s how you do it; don’t settle for anything less.

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