Tim Burgess – ‘Atypical Music’ EP review: A relaxing reimagining
Is there anything less vital than a remix EP? Not to be a downer about it, but a short collection of songs that you already know featuring artists you may never have heard of retooling songs that are only roughly a year old? Call me whatever the opposite of an alarmist is, but I can’t think of a single thing that matters less in the grand scheme of things than a remix EP. With that being said, we turn to the age-old question: are you the kind of person that is sad that no one cares, or are you the kind of person that is ecstatic that no one cares? Indie rock legend Tim Burgess appears to be the latter, because he has shared a new three-song remix EP of tracks from his wonderful studio album, Typical Music.
Since the number of people who care deeply about a Tim Burgess remix EP is relatively modest, Burgess just decides to make a grand time of it all by twisting and turning his songs into new shapes with help of some friends. The importance of this collection of songs is minimal, and each remixer tries their hardest to get to the stripped-back core of Burgess’ songwriting.
First up is English DJ Andy Votel, who adds his wavy sensibilities to two of the EP’s three tracks, ‘Flamingoes’ and ‘A Bloody Nose’. Votel gets naturalistic and primal with his remix of ‘Flamingo’ (here rendered in the plural form), stripping away most of the original track’s instruments and focusing on the song’s central bassline. Whether he’s bringing in animal noises or blurring the edges around the arrangement, Votel never does more than he needs to in order to make ‘Flamingoes’ an enjoyable, if somewhat plain, remix.
“Atypical Music is exactly what Andy Votel has specialised in over the last couple of decades and I’ve always admired his absolute obsession with introducing more ears to genres so niche that they are hard to describe – European horror movie DIY techno and suchlike,” Burgess says about vital. “So, Andy was a natural choice to re-jig a couple of cuts from Typical Music.“
Votel steps back up to the plate for his own take on Burgess’ ‘A Bloody Nose’, which seems as though he took the original song, filtered it through a computer, and held it underwater. Once again highlighting the bass as the remix’s main focus, Votel deconstructs ‘A Bloody Nose’ to its most basic elements. The remix of ‘A Bloody Nose’ is Votel’s more successful excursion on the EP because it has less reverence towards its source material: Votel completely dispenses of Burgess’ verbose lyrical flow from the original and turns the track into a near-instrumental.
To close out the EP, Burgess brings in bedroom pop prodigy Eyedress for a new take on the track ‘Sure Enough’. Eyedress takes Burgess’ original piano ballad and makes it sound like every other lo-fi bedroom pop song that has come out over the last decade. Like Votel, Eyedress has taken the “less-is-more” approach to remixing Burgess’ songs, which I find to be antithetical to the spirit of remixes. Burgess’ material is strong enough to stand up to the wrecking balls that these artists are taking to his arrangements, but instead of pumping up the songs with new life, it seems like Votel and Eyedress are trying to see how much they can strip away without the songs disappearing completely.
Part of the charm is that, in theory, Atypical Music is the complete opposite of Typical Music. While the latter was a sprawling 22-song album that was as pure a distillation of Burgess’ voice as possible, Atypical Music is a three-song jaunt that doesn’t hold any reverence toward Burgess or his intentions with the original LP. Atypical Music is proudly fleeting and slight, two qualities that I wouldn’t necessarily attribute to Typical Music.
If you want a fully fleshed-out collection of tracks with meticulous care put into them… check out the original version of Typical Music. It truly is an engrossing experience. There’s just not enough meat on the bone to make Atypical Music feel like anything other than a nice-enough placeholder for whatever Burgess does next. Is Burgess one of the more underrated artists working today? Absolutely. Does Atypical Music help solidify that reputation? Absolutely not. Is Atypical Music anything more than a pleasant diversion that will make you yearn for the warmer months? Absolutely not, but who said it had to be anything more than that?
The beauty in Atypical Music comes in the fact that Burgess has taken his already-relaxed LP and somehow made it even more chill. Some might think that lowering the stakes takes away from these songs, but everybody does their job on Atypical Music: each remixer adds new interesting layers, and Burgess’ songs are strong enough to withstand some disruption. It won’t top any major lists, but there are way worse ways to kill 20 minutes than hanging out with the fun and loose Atypical Music.
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