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Review: Ratatat Remixes Mixtape Volume 2 |
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While I seem to write about the music business every week, rarely do I write a straight up album review. It’s probably because I rarely find albums that I like. But I found one this week, and I’d like to share the wealth.
Ratatat, and electronic duo from New York, has been a favorite of mine for years, ever since I was introduced to the track “Seventeen Years” by a good friend at a party years ago. Their style is fascinating to me, as both a guitarist and a producer.
One of the main features of their music is the distorted guitar/synth sound. It’s used in a uniquely rhythmic way, not so much a gimmick as a new way of creating melody, tension, and release. Take a listen to the track, you’ll see what I mean:
Woodwinds or stringed instruments like the violin can cause a note to increase or decrease in volume after the note’s attack. Swells, sighs, and expressive modulations are possible. This ability makes these instruments inherently lyrical, able to shape musical lines not only when the notes are struck, but between the notes as well. Guitars (along with pianos and other percussive instruments) lack that ability. When you pluck a guitar, the note’s attack is the loudest part of the sound; after the string is plucked, the sound dies away. Guitarists create the illusion of lyrical, connected lines by carefully adjusting the volume of their note attacks. A good guitarist can create the illusion of a swell even though there is no actual swell in volume between the notes.
Ratatat takes a different path, using synths and effects to create lyrical, almost reversed sounding guitar lines that swell and move between the notes. The music breathes and comes to life like no guitar ever can on its own. The effect is perhaps best heard on the track “Cherry,” also off their first album Ratatat. Take a listen especially to the climax starting at about 3:30.
Ratatat is known for these kinds of textures, building largely instrumental music on layers of guitars and synths, with a liberal helping of heavy bass and drums to keep hip hop heads like me happy.
Recently, they’ve made their hip hop roots more explicit. In 2004, they released an album of hip hop remixes, and they’ve released a second version, titled Ratatat Remixes Mixtape Volume 2, as a free download. I’ll give you a moment to grab the tracks, then we can dive in.
What you get is fourteen tracks by modern stars like Ludacris and Kanye West as well as old school favorites like Notorious B.I.G. And every track has an original backing beat from Ratatat.
The remixes largely stick to the original styles, showing off Ratatat’s flair for imitation. The “dirty South” tracks from T.I. and Young Buck keep their crunked-up flavor, while Kanye West’s Diamonds leans heavily on the big synth sounds West seems to love himself. Not surprisingly, some of my favorite tracks are in the older style, like B.I.G. and Jay-Z’s “Allure,” which you can sample below:
That synth/guitar line, in classic Ratatat style, is mysterious and addictive. It just sounds fantastic, and it’s incredibly catchy.
The entire album sounds great in a similar way, and it’s eminently dance-able. It’s good music, good remixes, and as a whole, it’s the best album I’ve heard in a while. It embraces hip hop’s culture of borrowing and sampling and proves that derivative works can be just as creative as completely original projects.
And hell, it’s a free download, so why not check it out? After you do, tell me what you think.
hey there, nice review, informative! was just going to note that from reading interviews with ratatat when they sound like they’re using ‘almost reversed sounding guitar lines’ they often are, and a lot of the other interesting sounds they come up with are from a mixture of this and multiple layers of guitar, apparently they use a minimal amount of synth. They’re SO cool :D.