Name me a better remix album list than Daniel Avery's remix album list

“Alright, name me a better remix album than this,” says Daniel Avery to the camera as he brandishes a CD copy of Nine Inch Nails 1992 release Fixed.

Avery has just released Tremor (Midnight Versions), a reworking of his own album Tremor which came out last autumn. The remixes have a bit of a boogy about them – as he puts it, these are “club edits aimed squarely at the strobe light”.

Remixes are clearly on his mind, because he recently posted on his socials a tribute to his favourite remix albums. He leads with the Nine Inch Nails album, and the artwork for Midnight Versions seems to be inspired by the Nails artwork.

But he then mentions another batch of remix albums that he loves. Let's go through them.

The Human League / The League Unlimited Orchestra: Love And Dancing (1982), a dubbier take on their Dare album

The Cure: Mixed Up (1990), various twelve-inch bits and related bobs

Massive Attack V Mad Professor: No Protection (1995) – ain’t no Protection from this level of dub wizardry

Björk: Telegram (1996), various remixes of her Post tracks

Primal Scream: Echo Dek (1997), with Bobby’s band reimagining their Vanishing Point album, and oh my word how good was this era of Scream

Two Lone Swordsmen: Peppered With Spastic Magic (2004), although please can we let that word die

Aphex Twin: 26 Mixes For Cash (2003), which I wilfully misunderstand in this blog post

Soulwax: Nite Versions (2005) – they “reshaped my brain as a teenager” says Avery

That's a cracking selection, my favourites being Mad Professor, Primal Scream and Aphex Twin. I'd throw in Dangermouse and maybe Pet Shop Boys too, and I know James's Wah Wah doesn't count but it pretty effectively remixed my brain. 

What is your favourite remix album? Write your answer on a postcard and immediately remix it into a shredder.

Daniel Avery's Tremor (Midnight Versions) is out now.

Further Fats: Music Order Remixed New (see what I did there) (2017)

Further Fats: Cover me bad – Block Rockin' Beats by the Chemical Brothers (2021)

We need a new Mercury Music Prize for people that give a crap about electronic music

There's a sumptuous scene in Danny Boyle's best movie Sunshine where a fullstop-like planet Mercury slinks past a firey, all-powerful sun.

For electronica fans, it represents a brilliant metaphor for the Mercury Music Prize: an insignificant dot backed up by a glowing past that is more distant than you think.

When the Mercury showered Primal Scream with £20,000 for such a far-out album as Screamadelica, beating U2, Simply Red and Young Disciples, it was a kick in the Brit Awards' union jack pants. That was in 1992, remember, when 20 grand was worth about a billion quid..

The kudos reverbarated through the years with Portishead and Roni Size reaching equally dizzy heights. And that's despite the Mercury trying to derail everything by choosing M People in 1994.

I'm not saying this year's list sucks. I've filed Bat For Lashes, Glasvegas or (yawn) Friendly Fires into a big box labelled "shrug", but I'm sure they deserve their success. You may well argue this in the comments section.

But where's the electronica? We've been thrown a brace of bones with Underworld (although never with the ultimate techno album band Orbital), but there's something fundamentally wrong.

In a great piece for Bleep43, Toby Frith searches for any Mercury nods for Warp Records ("the UK’s most important label") and fails. You could make a similar argument for Leaf.

Firth argues it's because electronica immerses itself in singles and live appearances, rather than albums. He's right (think of Windowlicker), but the exclusion from this year's nominations of Squarepusher's Just A Souvenir is criminal.

It's more because of the man rather than the album. The Square one (photo, above, from Bangface) became the darling of the serious press last autumn; if any electronica artist was going to be the Mercury's first true IDM nomination, it was going to be him.

Except it wasn't. Inside that little dot of a prize, there so many are guitars, guitars, guitars, there's little room for a 303. And, as non-nominated Fatboy Slim will tell you, everybody needs a 303.

Maybe we live on a different planet, in a different solar system with Aphex Twin's grinning face where the sun should be. And maybe, therefore, we need our own Music Prize that respects a wickedly neglected genre.

Theatre Of Pictures: Volume Two

Ah, the smack of willow on fish, the whirr of blade against trunk fur. This is the season for the mammoth-mowing cricket olympics [1920s haddock version]; a true Englishman's sport.

No time for that, however. I have been pottering in the studio with the rest of a collective collectively known under the collective name of Theatre Of Noise. As you know, I promised to keep a picture diary of our podcast, so this second installment follows a first installment, which makes a good deal more sense than mammoth-mowing cricket olympics [1920s haddock version].

>Pointy shoes

So to the first picture we go, with gladdened hearts and pointy shoes. Behold a sixth member of our crew, George. He was our Gmmaz engineer for the day, and is well into his drum 'n' bass, although I've lost his Myspace URL so he doesn't get a nice orange link.



While we're talking technical, here's a photograph of eight subchannels with red faders. They are red because each one of them (a) increases sound levels and (b) launches a nuclear weapon six miles south of Oswestry, which is fine by me because Oswestry is a frozen shithole much in the style of Winnipeg.

>Making horseshoes



You have to know your Venetian Snares albums to get that last sentence. Anyhoo, we were given one big microphone and we had to make a horseshoe around it. After the metalwork had finished, we gathered ourselves into an extended semi-circle. (Keep up now...) It felt just like recording the Archers. I hate the Archers. If you listen to it, stop; it's rubbish.

Here's that microphone, set against a background of soundproof glass, our two-page running order, and an Important Red Marker Pen.

Look at the microphone. Isn't it a nice microphone? The round thing is a pop shield, which automatically converts any music into an insipid synthesis of a Britney hit.

With pop on our mind, it seemed only appropriate to interrupt our podcast - our "popcast", if you will - to indulge in a smidgeon of karaoke, as led by Fil.



>Three legs

Fil took the pictures on this picture diary, although obviously not that one, unless his left arm has a third elbow to enable him to hold a camera from that angle. That's my shoulder on the left. I have just landed upright from a Swedish three legged karaoke flip, which incidentally has only ever been performed successfully by me, the Chuckle Brothers and two former members of Primal Scream, although not at the same time.

I hoped this picture diary of our podcast would be informative and revealing. It's not working out well, is it? Part three, the startling denouement*, coming up soon.

*copyright Nikki French 2007