3 out of 5

Produced by: Various

Label: TVT

Wh… What happened here, guys?  Why is this remix album really good?  Why does it verge on being, like great?  Is it because it hands the reign over to some seasoned beat / industrial cats?  (Maybe.)  Is it because it spares us – excepting some key chorus phrases – the high school gloom lyrics?  (Possibly.)  Is it because the core of Gravity Kills’ songs contain amazing beats and rhythms?  (Less likely, but we’ll allow that the source material did provide the meat for this mixed-up sammich.)

Manipulated – either collecting singles’ remix or curated as a remix album – contains 13 tracks touched up by the likes of Lords of Acid, Martin Allen, Al Jourgensen and more – covering a gob-smacking 4 tracks from Kills’ premiere album.  Y’uh huh.  4 tracks.  Meaning, yes, you’re hearing most of these songs at least three times.  …Which had me leaning towards giving the remixers full credit on this album, because what holds it back is that repetition: The need to maintain some phrases or hooks from the original songs.  And you know what – impressively, the music holds up from track to track thanks to the creatives finding insane ways to deconstruct and reconstruct the smallest elements of these songs into much more fascinating compositions; it’s really just when the painfully silly lyrics drop – the same lyrics, three songs in a row – that you wrinkle your nose a bit and wish that, maybe, these had just been instrumentals.  ‘Cause GK learned their NiN / Depeche Mode act well and can write (at least four) impressive riffs.  Lyrics, though, are pretty much just dance floor fodder acting like legit thoughts, predicting Linkin Park by a decade or so.

Anyhow, only about three of these tracks come across as “normal” remixes – pump up the beat and repeat – and Jourgensen’s is actually one of those…  Elsewhere, whether its jungle or back-masked vocals, just as the extra production on their debut album livened it up more than it probably deserved, the reworkings of these songs come close to making gold out of…  I dunno, fool’s gold.

If not for the occasional reminders of the limitations of the source material, this would be a damn fine album on its own, nixing any mention of it being remixes, since it really feels like its own thing.