Various Artists -Trampled: The ElefantTraks Remix Album

Fri 8th Sep, 2006 in Music Reviews

When a hip-hop based label achieves its biggest success and exposure with a song that’s a fairly faithful cover of a Vietnam-era protest song it’s fairly obvious that they’re not your typical music label. Yet, all labels must obey the law that demands that once the label has a few successful albums it’s time to release a remix collection to eek out a few extra coins from their newly established fanbase. And a label called Elefant Traks isn’t about to forget that law are they? After all, the remix collection has basically altered the way completists go about getting their mitts on everything recorded by their favourite groups – why buy singles for the b-sides when it’s inevitable that they’ll soon turn up on a compelation such as this.

Equal parts hip-hop, dub, electro and gypsy this first compilation of remixes from the Elefant Traks label features a volley of sounds from the frontlines of the battle to form a distinctly Australian hip-hop sound. Elefant Traks have championed a contemporary Australian sound, unlike many current Australian rock acts could have recorded their chart-topping albums in any almost any year, or at least any year after the first appearance of Led Zep. Guitar riffary and lyrics loaded with wailing pleas to various women are always going to be fun, yet sometimes you need a little more – though I’m not talking about Jet’s upcoming single ’(Ohh Yeah, Baby) I Want a Little More’.

Like folk music, rap places the great emphysis on a story-telling vocal that is high in the mix, rather than buried under layers of instrumentation. It’s this power for story-telling that led Public Enemy’s Chuck D to declare that rap music is the black CNN. It seems that Elefant Traks are keen to sign on as Chuck D’s Australian reporters. ‘Apocalypta’, here remixed by Combat Wombat’s Monkey Marc, is a story of powerless frustration from a Australian solider on a peace-keeping mission
/We left home as heroes with photo-ops and press releases/
/A hand-shake from the minister and a speech on freedom/
/’shinning beacons of democracy’/
‘Can’t Breathe’ reports from country towns and suburbs without a single mention of battlers or dodgy con-men. While post-rockers Pivot add urgency to ‘The Metres Gained’, a shot from the trenches of the First World War could perhaps be of aid to any politicians seeking new methods of keeping ‘the kids’ interested in our history.

Occasionally their earnestness can stray towards the naff philosophising of the most simplistic kind as demonstrated by lines like – Life is more like a bicycle than a hearse. Nothing wrong with optimism, but that lyric is just so ridiculous it’s hard not to laugh, side-step the bloke in the kaftan and continue on your way. The TRAKSWET mix of TZU’s ‘Recoil’ matches the aggression and anger of the lyrics with a fierce crunch of percussion, yet it’s new lyrics for the Australian national anthem,
/Australians all let us recoil/
/for we have no idea/
/we go to war for wealth and oil
/our home is girt by fear/
cause a slight cringe. Though, that could just be because of the reminder of the actual anthem.

The unexpectedly successful cover of ‘I was Only 19’ features here twice; as the ‘original’ cover and as an awkward remix from British folktronica group Tuung, who have bizarrely chosen to force a gratingly robotic edge to John Schumann’s vocal. The Unkle Ho remix of a Mikelangelo & The Black Sea Gentlemen tune is also an unfortunate blight on the collection – though through no fault of the remixer. Here the problem is clearly the original material as the song, ‘A Formidable Marinade’, is an overheated serve of the sort of glop that you’d expect to be served at a low rent theatre restaurant. Mikelangelo’s vocal is such a sad attempt at theatrical ‘hey-look-at-me-I’m crazzzzy’ that it actually lowers the bar for unrehearsed high-school musicals. His attempt at decadent lyricism are at first laughable, then just pathetically sad.

Fortunately the remainder of Trampled far exceeds these sad carcasses that should have been abandoned in the most distant of Elefant graveyards. The Unkle Ho remix of Hermitude’s ‘Music from the Mind’ and Sulo’s remix of Sparrow Hill’s ‘The Locust’ are both sweetly seductive. Excellent instrumental hip-hop can be heard as Plutonic Lab rework Hermitude, who then pass on favour with their remix work for Unkle Ho. Curse Ov Dialect offer the highlight, and collection opener, with an irrepressible and irresistible take on the Herd’s ‘No Disclaimers’.

There are plenty of styles and experiments on offer here, yet at 74 minutes this collection is far too long for whet is essentially a b-sides collection.  Though with some simple editing the duds can be dismissed and you’ve got a collection that bounces with new ideas and energy – more trampoline than trampling.