- Troy Pierce is a strange cove. He's got to be one of the most uncompromising DJs around and has scant regard for his audience unless they're willing to embrace his own particular brand of hell on Earth. He's a member of the Minus crew but seems to have little in common with them, relatively speaking. If there's anyone who's usurped the minimal aesthetic and customised it in only the best Gothic black, then Troy's the one. I often wonder how his stuff goes down in places where the sun shines all day. At any beach party for instance.
Troy is championed as minimal's secret weapon, but in reality he's spawned a genre of his own, one that's in touch with the dark side in all of us which we're reluctant to completely surrender to. His productions sound like no one else, and in the process he's become one of the genre's few real auteurs of any note. On record he has few peers so I can't imagine that it's an easy job to remix him.
Magda's the first to try on this EP, the second batch of remixes of cuts from Pierce's 'Enemy Love' album as Louderbach. Her interpretation of 'Reflected' meanders and undulates like a motorbike that's dying a slow death, but it's got the funk, courtesy of a throbbing bassline that drags the track through a low-key, angst spoken word vocal. Ryan Crosson's take on 'Scattered From The Inside' is nothing special, but it does the job, keeping things nagging and insistent with a high-end percussive battery interspersed with thick slabs of bass. Ellen Allien's remix of 'Season 6' is like a narcoleptic trying to wake up: it's an exercise in futility that just never seems to get off the ground properly. Finally, D. Fine & Nabas offer something a little different with a piece of subdued drama that races across the steppes into oblivion, sporadically broken up by what sounds like a synthesised harpsichord. It's a linear piece on an infinite loop and it's not easy to imagine where it's taking you.
Magda and D. Fine & Nabas come off best here, but it's my feeling that a little bit too much respect has been paid to the originals overall. Whether they've been tampered with enough or not, each track, with the exception of 'Selling Souls (Late Transfer remix)' sounds to my ears like Troy is still at the controls. There's an overriding sense of melancholia and loss that unites each interpretation, which is perfectly in keeping with the originals. Not an easy artist to remix at all then, but it's an indication of his strength as an producer that he brings everyone around to his way of thinking so effortlessly.
TracklistA1: Reflected (Liquid Acid remix) - Magda
A2: Season 6 (Allien Away remix) - Ellen Allien
B1: Scattered From The Inside (Scatter remix) - Ryan Crosson
B2: Selling Souls (Late Transfer remix) - D. Fine & Nabas