Ruby
Altered & Proud (The Short-Staffed Remixes)
Thirsty Ear
The U.K duo of Ruby has finally returned from semi-obscurity with not one but two new releases this year. Welcome to disc two, the accompanying remix album for Short-Staffed at the Gene Pool. As with any remix or covers album, you have your hits and misses. And when it does the latter, boy does it get bad. Luckily, the band has chosen wisely on this venture, which I’m pleased to say is almost 100% enjoyable. With such name-dropped figures as Kid 606 and Dot Allison on the roster, one would be hard-pressed to find cracks on this Altered surface.
From the downbeat ammunition supplied by Aksum’s “Waterside” rendition or Mr. 606’s dilapidated, glitch-filled “Lilypad” mix, the hits keep coming. But perhaps the gold star should be stuck on Console’s electro-funk mix of “Sweet Is.” It bumps, it bounces, and it arrives at the perfect time, on the comedown portion of this altered state. This record is actually an improvement from the original LP, but in this software and sampler dependent era, that’s old news on the message board.
Thirsty Ear Recordings: http://www.thirstyear.com
