Every so often, the folks over at Pitchfork end up, despite my best (worst) wishes, making damn good picks.
Recently, when the always-detestably on-point Philip Sherburne (who we at Res casually and not-so-accidentally missed in his opening DJ slot for The Knife at Webster Hall way back when monkeys were real monkeys and scary sad goblin trolls weer real scary sad goblin trolls) named the Supermayer remix of Gotye’s “Hearts A Mess” one of the most important tech tracks this year, lobbing adjectives and genres like “acoustic” and “schaffel” (and “acoustic schaffel”, all together now one two three two two three) , and followed that up with the fact that the remix had been pulled, on the team AkselMichael side, before it had ever seen the light of day-well, it suddenly became essential to lil mister me.
That’s how the glorious wonder of music on the interwebs works, really-you pull at one little thread and suddenly you find yourself enveloped. I’d never heard Gotye before I started hunting for one damn Supermayer remix, hoping against hope that it was the acousti-shuffle epic genius Sherburne was talking it up to be. Like I said, though, pull a thread…:
As it would happen, Gotye’s a self-released, self-produced Australian crate-digger and sound-accumulator, whose sophomore album, Like Drawing Blood , somehow completely passed me by in the distant future/far-reaching past that is/was the year 2006. It’s a shame, too, because Gotye, essentially, is a child of love spawned from combining sub-atomic particles found in DJ Shadow, early RJD2, the entire Ninja Tunes label, Royksopp and French/Italian adult-contep house (think: Air, Tellier, Quiet Village, etc). Seeking, searching and securing dusty grooves and nicks in vinyl, Gotye wipes the layer of film off of old 12″ and 7″ records and molds them into perfect nouveau pop that tugs at the heartstrings.
All of this I discovered when I stumbled upon the original album version of what, apparently (I can’t front like I knew this before a week ago), was Gotye’s biggest hit-”Hearts A Mess”
There are some wonderfully strange moments on this tune, with an intro that actually fades into what becomes Gotye’s backing orchestral track (and as such is incredibly reminiscent of stuff that cat from Japan, David Sylvian, did with the Nine Horses project). The way Gotye’s silken, younger Wainwright-esque crooning (see, I told you: that French-Talian elevator-pop) is immediately accessible but hidden, only breaking for the out-of-place but awesome-because-of-it scream of the chorus’ final word the second time through. This is one hell of a future pop song, to the point where, if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear he had to be Swedish.
I can’t hide, though, that when I hear this song, the video always plays in my head
And, once you’ve seen it, you understand the reason. The story seems to be that Gotye’s leading a gathering of troubadour heartbreak freaks across the world, seeking…but never finding. The visuals are just…spellbinding. Gotye: Hearts A Mess (Ocelot remix)
I’ve been told, by Hacks and R Jamz, that the “kids” around here (I don’t see any kids…) “like the Ocelot”. I’m not sure what that means, but this remix utterly floors me. Super-epic high-energy trance-cendental flooring, seemingly based around the notion that the scream of “connect” that I mentioned before should be a starting point rather than a climax. And, oh, climax this one does-about a billiontyleven times.
Gotye: Hearts A Mess (Supermayer’s supermess mix)
And then, like Etta James said-at last. While the Supermayer album may have been far too cowbell frat-funkin’ to ever really reach the level of “good”, nearly everything the team of Michael Mayer and Superpitcher have turned out as remixes have been spellbinding. This is no exception, though it’s easy to see why it’s shelved-it’s an 8-minute redux on the original, making Gotye into the epic anti-hero lovelost balladeer, and turning those pum-pum-pa-pum drums into, yup, an acoustic version of the beloved Kompakt shuffletech. What proves to me Michael and lil Super-P still have their original dark brilliance in them, though, is the end of this: 30 seconds of heartbreaking vocals and ambient birdcall, proving that, yeah, they knew what they were doing when they pulled this-trying not to outshine the original.
Exploring the Like Drawing Blood album has had its’ ups and downs for me-some of the songs are utterly unique and fresh to my ears, some of them sound like awful Quiet Village rejections. With that said, there’s definitely a gold mine of Gotye stuff to explore-and so, as always, I’m starting here and moving forward.
Visit Gotye’s official web site.
