U.S. musician Jay Bodley makes rich, spacious ambient under the well-chosen name A Setting Sun. On this EP, selections from his five-song January release Flower Garden of Doom get the remix treatment, although the results still lean towards the deeply mellow. First, composer/guitarist Giuseppe Ielasi turns in a vibrant and mellow reading of the title track, followed by Kranky Records mainstay Benoit Pioulard adding wavering vocals to “Solaris Ocean” without losing the original’s hymn-like vibe.
Detroit producer Dial81 brings spectral washes, chill vocal samples, and light-stepping, DJ Shadow-ish beats to “Sun Hammer Pounding”, arriving at a sort of submerged hip-hop. Philadelphia sound designer Radere draws the same track out to 13 minutes of bucolic, great-outdoors bliss, all bird sounds and soft chimes. Bodley then approaches his own “Raspberry” by stripping it until it’s barely there. We close with Toronto duo Nadja, who get glitch-y with “Solaris Ocean” to the point where it centres on a heady patch of looping while other textures ghost around it. It creates quite a dizzying effect, easily standing out from the other remixes here.
Half the job of a remix release is to make us look at the originals in a new way, and this EP certainly does that. It should send listeners back to the source as well as connect them with other work by these distinguished remixers. And for the more boutique-minded fans, the EP is also available in a limited run of 50 cassettes.
Doug Wallen
