| · Sometimes pop stars just do it better.
Grammy-winning producers Scott Billington and Steve Reynolds have been fooling around with roots music for a few years now. For their most recent effort – their debut album as Tangle Eye – they’ve delved into field recordings made by legendary folklorist Alan Lomax in the American South half a century ago.
Sound familiar? It should – that’s what Moby’s hit "Natural Blues" was based on. But it worked much better when he did it.
Several of the tracks – like "John Henry’s Blues" and "Parchman Blues" – get into a weird, mellow, jazz-dub-prog rock vibe. Now, that might work on albums like Verve Remixed, where the original material is jazz, but not when the basis is a cappella, old-time folk music. The better tracks either don’t stray much from the original genre – like the gospel-house stylings of "Soldier" or the straight-up dub remix of "Chantey" – or lean towards beat-focused electronica, like "Heaven" and "O Death."
Too bad that sometimes mixing it up means messing it up.
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