Exchange

Michael Fakesch, formerly half of the electro duo Funkstörung, has focused much of his energy as a solo artist on creating music and sound design for TV commercials (some of them quite high-profile) and film scores. But in his spare time he has continued doing remix work for friends and colleagues, and this excellent compilation shows that he's still at the top of his game. It opens with a gleefully varied mix of Mr. Oizo's "Lambs Anger/Jo," which opens with a sharply lurching intro, then careens from house to breaks to blips without a care in the world. Things stay in that crazy-like-a-genius mode for quite some time: his remix of Booka Shade's "Mandarine Girl" starts out with blocky glitches and then subsides into beautifully swinging funk; Von Südenfed's "Rhinohead" gets a heavy-footed Parliament groove with aggressively chopped-up rock guitars; Notwist's "Gloomy Planets" juxtaposes sweetly lovely vocals with hiss-funk backing sonics. Singer Taprikk Sweezee is this album's secret weapon: he appears on several tracks, delivering an unhinged falsetto here (Towa Tei's "Taste of You") and a yowling Larry Blackmon imitation there (Kidkanevil's "Black Bug"). But Fakesch's fingerprints are on every cut-up sample, every relentlessly tweaked 808 beat, and every squelched chord, and it's his particular brilliance that turns this wildly varied program into a coherent whole.