T. Rex were never a dance band in the strictest sense, but vocalist/bandleader
Marc Bolan and drummer
Bill Legend sure had a solid sense of rhythm, and the group's gift for the boogie (filtered deep through
Bolan's hippie/glam sensibilities) made their music easy to stomp or sway to. It may be a big jump from
T. Rex's early-'70s heyday to the dancefloor culture of the 21st century, but that doesn't mean no one could find a link between them. To honor
Marc Bolan on the 40th anniversary of his 1977 death, 15 different remix artists have reworked material from the
T. Rex catalog. The result is
Remixes, which takes the very '70s sound of
T. Rex and moves it into the 21st century. The set kicks off with a new mix of "Children of the Revolution" from
Reflex; this version adds no new elements, as
Reflex strips the track down to its basics and pushes the martial rhythms of the song to the forefront. The other producers featured here add and subtract various bits and pieces from the original recordings, running the gamut from
Mischa "Book" Chillak's "Metal Guru," which adds plenty of electronic stutter and pushes the drum sounds up to thunderous levels, to
Ra Ra Riot's "New York City" and
Infuze's "Calling All Destroyers," which seem to have stripped everything save
Bolan's vocals, building new gleaming electronic soundscapes from scratch.
Bolan's passionate vocal persona shines through on most of these tracks, and it suggests that he could have found an audience with club kids and electronic devotees if he'd lived into the '90s; he certainly had the charisma and daring for it.
Remixes is an intriguing experiment that finds a common ground between the glam rock hero of the '70s and the cutting edge of EDM in the 2010s. ~ Mark Deming
