Kenji Jammer – Hula Hula Dance 2

UUTWO records DDCU-2002
2003.04.16
Or: the problem of listening to remix albums without knowing the original.
Who has a truer listening experience? The person who picks up a remix album without knowing the originals, or the one with a deep understanding of the material to be remixed? And does it matter if the remixer winds up using little of the material (70% of all remixers)? What if the remixer uses nothing but the material and then reconfigures it into something new (Sean O’Hagan’s remixes of Cornelius and Pizzicato Five, both of which are wonderful)? What is the criteria? How “danceable” something is? How much something is “rescued”? How faithful to the material? How sacriligious?
Kenji Jammer is the pseudonym of Kenji Suzuki, of whom I know nothing except he seems to have started in the ’80s, done his time playing hard rock (opening for still-famous-in-Japan Deep Purple and Stevie Ray Vaughan), moved all over the world, and now in this alter ego explores acoustic and lap steel sounds with a definite mellow bent. Fortunately, the CD ends with two of his originals, or one would never know what’s being remixed here. “Sail On” is a skanking jam, and takes nearly all of the track until the steel guitar comes in. Okay, so it makes me wonder what Hula Hula Dance, the original, sounds like. It also reminds me, for the third time in a row today, of the Orb.
So then, the best of the mixes are Fantastic Plastic Machine’s mix of “Daddy’s Delight,” which seems to mix a vocoder with Kenji’s slide guitar, and the “Across the Border” mix of “Universe”, which toodles along very politely, even seeping into the background. It’s pleasant.