Various Artists mixed by Simian Mobile Disco - FABRICLIVE41

SMD are have launched a two-pronged attack on Summer ’08, keeping their names on everyone’s lips for a second year running – first with their remix album, and now with this mix for Fabric. Their legendary DJ sets are eclectic affairs, but with that central common thread of their love of all things expressly electronic, vintage machinery and synths, weird sounds and FX, and a hefty dash of quirkiness. This mix sums up that ethos perfectly.
 
Early on we get the rampant electro of their own Simple bleeping and squiggling all over the shop, soon giving way to some discofied flavours like Serge Santiago’s subdued take on Hercules & Love Affair’s Blind and the squiggly acid-laced Joystick by Discodeine. Disco given a freaky electro makeover that is. Metro Area’s nu-disco blueprint Miura still sounds fantastic, before the electro influence starts to creep back in with Worthy’s bouncy Crack El. Moon Dog’s Suite Equestria shows their love for all things kooky with its jaunty xylophone rhythms, and after some more eccentric beats we’re slammed (surprisingly perhaps) into Deadmau5 vs Jelo’s hideously large electro-stomp The Reward Is Cheese, which stomps all over your poor little head. Stomp stomp. Simon Baker’s loopy, brain-twisting mix of SMD’s Sleep Deprivation slots in next, keeping the pressure high with its chattering castanets and incessant wonkiness, before Popof’s rampant filth-fest The Chomper throbs, pulsates, squeaks and bleeps out of the speakers.
 
Before the filth finale a curveball combines from Raymond Scott’s Cindy Electronium, with its slightly softer approach – illustrating their ability to keep a crowd on its toes – but then the mix hits a low point with the inclusion of the massively overplayed and over compilationed Erotic Discourse from Bobby Peru. I mean really, couldn’t they have even done a re-rub of it or something? Poor show! A techno finale comes from Plastikman’s minimal filth blueprint Spastik and Green Velvet’s druggy, nasty, boshing Flash...and then a little disappointingly The Walker Brothers’ Nite Flights – a track obviously dear to SMD but a real anti-climax after what’s gone before. It’s not that it’s a completely different style (shoegazy pop), but it just doesn’t really work.
 
Anyway, minor gripes aside it’s generally a great mix for lovers of electronic sounds.