White Flowers was one of my favourite albums of 2014 and in what I hope is a brief interlude before a follow up, eight selections from that record have been given the re-mix treatment with varying degrees of radicalism.
The sparse beauty of the originals lend themselves to tasteful adornments and some interpretations choose to retain and emphasise the simplicity of the songs. Others gently lead the two women of Lutine away from traditional trails into a thicker forest of weirdness
Died Of Love, re-mixed by Laura Cannell, opens proceedings by multi-tracking the angelic vocal harmonies of Heather Minor and Emma Morton set against beautifully strange violin backing.
Sarah Angliss (piano) and Stephen Hiscock (percussion) apply relatively delicate brush strokes to Sallow Tree choosing to retain the bird song and auto harp. Likewise, Michael Tanner makes only minor embellishments to Death An The Lady.
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From then on things get seriously strange. Kemper Norton dispenses with the voices entirely to transform Espera into a fully fledged instrumental drone. For To The Sea, cellist Bela Emerson applies fuzzy and spectral sound shapes while Synnove becomes a piece of pure electronica when reworked by Shape Worship.
It is something a relief when the voices re-emerge from all this sonic experimentation on White Flowers and So It Goes mixes by Oliver Coates and Pete Wiggs respectively.
All in all, the remixes strike a healthy balance between the strange and the spectral to make for intriguing companion piece to the original work.
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