VARIOUS ARTISTS
Verve Remixed 3
Verve/Universal
· After two Verve retooling projects, the third instalment hits a snag.
It’s an odd but interesting affair when contemporary producers and musicians set out to reinterpret and modernize the jazz canon. The melding of modern production with yesteryear’s supreme talent can yield highly rewarding results (as was more or less the case with the first two Verve Remixed albums). Revitalizing and recontextualizing gems for the contemporary age, it brings jazz-age hip into the contemporary pop matrix. On the other hand (as is the case with this third volume) the blend can produce an aural laxative so disengaged from the original versions that one questions the benefit of a re-rub.
Verve Remixed 3 falters on two essential fronts – track selection and production. While the Verve catalogue is chock full of engaging grooves, you’d hardly know it from this compilation. Despite using work by such greats as Astrud Gilberto, Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington, all tracks, save for three (Max Sedgeley, RSL and Lyrics Born’s genius retooling of Sarah Vaughan’s "Peter Gunn," Anita O’Day’s "Sing Sing Sing" and Jimmy Smith’s "Stay Loose") are proper candidates for the laudanum gazebo at your favourite colon-service centre. Formulaically weaving house beats and broken beats around odd vocal samples does make an engaging remix.
Most tracks plod when they should scorch and meander when they should get to the punch. Given the calibre of Verve’s catalogue, these projects should grab the listener by the ear, pulling them into a music that is as vibrant and essential now as it was then.
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