dZihan & Kamien ‎– Fakes

Dzihan & Kamien have always had a knack for downtempo remixes, with an eye towards actual 'remixing,' as opposed to transposing a pre-existing vocal track over a beat. Billie Holiday, for instance, gets "Don't Explain" chopped up and placed over an intricate drum sequence, while Serge Gainsbourg's "Je T'aime... Moi Non Plus" turns into moody jazz. Tosca's "Busenfreund" is recast as a more upbeat affair. The boys aren't afraid of a little fusion, either, like the Indian singing and sitar crashing against the electric guitar and thick beats of "Ambala." Forms of Plasticity's "Avalon" goes a bit more swinging, but not all the remixes succeed: Nitin Sawhney's "Homelands" is a bit dull (the dub version is ten times better). The second disc of jazz-band version of Dzihan & Kamien's own tracks, which generally work well. Listen to the rattling cymbals of the melancholy "Drophere." "Where's Johny Sabatino" gets a thoughtful, languorous redo. Sometimes, though, the jazz can veer into easy listening territory, as on the otherwise crisp "Stiff Jazz." "Just You and I" loses some of its ethnic flair in the revision, but the slow, aching "Gutenmorgenduft" makes up for those deficiencies.

I have to say that every track on CD1 is weak and underdeveloped. Even the remix of the Atjazz track. I have the original and the King Britt remix of Atjazz "Touch The Sun" and both are way better than the remix here and are mastered much better as well. Apparently dZihan & Kamien's formula for remixing is to come up with about 20 or 30 seconds of groovy sounding hooks and vocal bits and then repeat in a loop, as if that makes a good electronic music song. The tracks do sound good for about 20 seconds or so, but then proceed to quickly go nowhere and get boring and cliché. In sharp contrast, CD2 consists entirely of Jazz, and sounded pretty nice, with excellent audio quality.