The End Is Always Near

The Knife “We Share Our Mother’s Health (Trentemoller Remix)” – I must say that I was a bit nervous about the prospects of “We Share Our Mother’s Health” remixes. Though the album version is just about perfect (it’s my second favorite Knife song after “Heartbeats,” which is saying a lot), it did need at least an edit to make it work better in DJ set. There’s a tendency toward abstraction in a lot of dance remixes, and my fear was that we would end up with loads of nondescript mixes that would erase most of the song’s appeal. Thankfully, Trentemoller aims for function, embracing the song’s formidable hooks and amping everything up until it’s sort of ridiculous. It starts off a little slow, but stick with it – it seems as though it was designed so that people who already know and love the song would go bananas with every new dynamic shift. It’s pretty damn exciting, especially when he pitch-shifts the vocals even more on the breakdown, and then builds it to this ecstatic climax of snare hits before dropping back into the track’s signature groove. (Click here for The Knife’s official site.)

Paul Oakenfold featuring Brittany Murphy “Faster Kill Pussycat” – Yes, that Brittany Murphy. It turns out that she is actually a pretty solid vocalist, and a fairly distinct one at that. I mean, there’s a few songs from that last Lindsay Lohan album that I like a lot (I’ll link to something I wrote about them a few weeks ago when it finally comes online in a week or so), but Lohan has almost nothing to do with why those songs work – her persona as both an actress and as a celebrity is conspicuously absent from every vocal performance on that record. Murphy, however, sings exactly as you might imagine based on her trashed-up performances in movies like 8 Mile, Spun, and Sin City. She’s definitely going for the damaged sex kitten thing and she pulls it off rather well. Of course, most of the appeal here comes from Oakenfold’s track, which is a relentless Jaxx-ish dance-pop-rock beast that nearly outdoes the best songs from Cish Cash. (Click here to buy it from Juno.)