REVIEW: Caribou – Mars (Head High Venus Remix)
Caribou is an animal, literally and figuratively. Let’s leave the North American deer species to David Attenborough and focus on Dan Snaith’s musical persona.
Releasing music under the names Manitoba and Daphni, Dan Snaith is a musical behemoth and is defined more as a composer/recording artist than a DJ. It’s for this exact reason that Caribou is remixed heavily, and he isn’t ashamed of it. We can see this as he often reposts these reworks on his Soundcloud and has recently released an expanded edition of his award winning album ‘Our Love‘ including mixes from Cyril Hahn and Head High.
What’s interesting is this extended album includes two different remixes of the track ‘Mars’ from the German powerhouse Head High: The Venus remix & The Core remix. Caribou has commented on the club playability of Head High’s music and this two track feature can be seen as a homage to the techno king’s work.
Head High is a German based DJ who has around ten different alias’. From the instant you click play on the Venus remix of Mars you are transported to an illegal German after party. The remix strays quite far from the original in terms of style, yet carries it perfectly into the techno field. It wouldn’t be out of place in a Jimmy Edgar set and is one of the more melodic songs in the genre.
This remix breaks all stigma of techno music being repetitive, boring and mindless music for the inebriated. Head High’s Venus remix is amazingly structured and the vocal samples that drop just after the one minute mark are worryingly addictive. The phrase “Respect the Remix” comes to mind on listening to this and if it’s good enough for Caribou to release on an extended album, it’s good enough for us.
You can grab this extended version of ‘Our Love’ on iTunes and Head High will be playing at Queen’s Student’s union in Belfast in April. The Irish government may have reinstated the controlled substances law by then but still a great opportunity to see the UK graced by this german techno legend.
Written by Mark Campion
