Remix albums are an fascinating prospect. They take one thing followers already love, and alter it. Typically it’s for the higher, different instances much less so. And that’s an inherently controversial transfer. However from Trent Reznor’s 9 Inch Nails remixes within the 90s, to Linkin Park’s Reanimation album of the 00s, and even Code Orange releasing a remix of their single “Only One Way” in February 2018, the remix is an experimental fixed that enables an artist to discover new territory whereas concurrently giving followers a brand new taste to tuck into. Rob Zombie’s American Made Music To Strip By is a shining instance of all the things a remix album goals to be.
Launched on October 26, 1999, American Made Music To Strip By was the White Zombie mastermind’s try at taking what was present on the very finish of the twentieth Century and making use of it to the warped musical canvas of his debut solo album, Hellbilly Deluxe. And it’s each bit as wild a journey as that sounds.
Gone is far of Hellbilly’s goth’n’roll rowdiness and, instead, the digital dance music of the 90s rose up. Joined throughout the 12 tracks by the likes of DJ Deadly, NIN’s Charlie Clouser and Chris Vrenna, and Rammstein, Zombie and his motley crew of collaborators got down to place the characters that populate the debut firmly within the current.
“Living Dead Girl,” as soon as a reckless lust ballad to an undead muse, is given a tripped-out makeover on the “Subliminal Seduction Mix,” rising because the soundtrack to a very daunting comedown, with the sleaze issue rammed as much as 11. The extreme ominousness of “What Lurks On Channel X?” turns into a warehouse anthem courtesy of a “XXX Mix.” And, with the “Si Non Oscillas, Noli Tintinnare Mix,” the Hellbilly lead single, “Dragula,” evolves from being the soundtrack to a cyberpunk bar brawl to being, properly, music to strip to. Not the biker from hell, right here Zombie is the raver from Mars.
By all of that, the music doesn’t lose any of the sting that outlined it the primary time round. Zombie’s macabre lyricism nonetheless pierces by way of each observe – made much more impactful by the shortage of vocals in sure sections – and, sonically, it packs the identical quantity of energy; it’s simply being drawn from a special place.
The re-imagination even extends so far as the paintings. A world away from Zombie’s menacing glare that adorns Hellbilly Deluxe, the American Made Music To Strip By paintings is a neon mind-melt, showcasing Zombie’s now-wife, Sherri Moon, laid naked, bathed in inexperienced, in a 50s pin-up pose harking back to the paintings to White Zombie’s 1996 remix album, Supersexy Swingin’ Sounds. Aesthetic has at all times been essential to Zombie’s artwork, and that is no completely different. Simply because the music had been re-worked, Zombie was additionally drawing on a completely contrasting facet of his character and life on the album’s packaging.
American Made Music To Strip By has an important place in Zombie’s canon. Being the looming futuristic boogeyman that his solo debut portrayed is all properly and good, however concern is a lot extra highly effective when it’s relatable to the right here and now. Ever the conceptualist, these remixes, that paintings, and the collaborations that went into the undertaking allowed Zombie to flesh out his persona and add complete unpredictability to his arsenal.
With the standing Zombie has achieved as a screenwriter and rating composer alongside the solo materials he has since recorded, American Made Music To Strip By can now be seen as one other important step in creating the dexterity, ambition, and inventive imaginative and prescient that has come to outline his output.
Zombie, who’d already launched two White Zombie remix albums, wasn’t alone in his experimentation. Many revered artists of the time had been attempting their hand at comparable tasks. Aforementioned genius Trent Reznor supplied a number of iterations of hit single “Head Like A Hole” all the best way again in 1990; Concern Manufacturing facility had deserted the guitar and went all in on electronics for his or her Remanufacture remixes; and even Metallica had Moby work underneath a literary pseudonym on a remix of ‘Until It Sleeps’.
We now look again on these artists – Zombie included – as pioneers whose burning ardour for experimentation has earned them that standing. Initiatives similar to American Made Music To Strip By, then, function an enchanting perception into a few of rock music’s finest minds. In the present day, it’s the artists taking comparable dangers and exploring new approaches that can go down because the icons of the long run. Rob Zombie is a testomony to that.
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