Domino made their name with the grungy pop of Arctic Monkeys and the retro stylings of Franz Ferdinand, but over the last decade they have certainly engaged their dancing shoes to good effect.
More often plumping for a well timed remix rather than a fully-fledged disco banger; this compilation highlights the good and bad of these experiments.
The first disc proved to be the stronger of the two.
Still Going’s remix of ‘Beat And The Pulse’ does manage to kick things off in some style, their synth-pop sound dating better than some of the more upfront club styles on display.
Joy Orbison remixing of Four Tet’s ‘Love Cry’, would be difficult to get wrong with gorgeous synth lines polishing the broken beats of the original.
Carl Craig then produces the highlight of the album with his re dub of a The Junior Boys track, turning a melancholy pop song into an intergalactic journey into the Afrosphere.
But disc two, which lends itself more to the type of dance/rock hybrid popularly referred to in the last decade as ‘bangers’, suffers the indignity of growing old unfashionably.
A lot of this sub-Chemicals type noise may have lit up festival bills in 2009, but now sound like an embarrassing uncle desperately trying to be hip.
Alan Braxe and Fred Falke’s filter-house remix of ‘Whats Your Damage’ manages to just sound dull, and Fake Blood’s remix of ‘Marina Gasolina’ is possibly the blandest sounding release he’s put his name to.
Things do pick up slightly at the end with Onoeohtrix Point Never’s rework of ‘Wild Beasts’ ditching the synth presence for some experimental genre-flexing funk.
Hats off to Domino for going further than talking the talk, it’s a shame their left-field ethos was not as discriminatory here as on some of their rock releases.
