Interpretaciones (CD)

Minus the Bear’s sophomore album Menos El Oso was a significant departure from their debut full-length Highly Refined Pirates. The playful guitar-tapping, fluid production, and nostalgia-bating melodies were largely excised for air-tight drums, glitchy guitar samples, and an overall air that was more of a futurist interpretation of sepia-toned noir than their predecessor’s contemporary Polaroid romanticism. It was an album that already sounded like a dark, stuttering remix of their previous efforts. But Minus the Bear was still—in both spirit and instrumentation—a rock band, and those staccato riffs and dance beats practically begged to be re-examined from behind the producer’s console. So the band enlisted a team of underground remix artists to reinvent each of Menos El Oso’s eleven tracks. The resulting Interpretaciones Del Oso is a wild and imaginative ride through a dizzying array of sonic reconstructions. P.O.S. makes “Drilling” a club banger; FOG turns “Memphis & 53rd” into the kind of murky gloom churned out by reclusive black metalhead Xasthur; Dälek producer Oktopus transforms “The Game Needed Me” into a dreamy druggy daze; Battles’ Tyondai Braxton deconstructs “Fulfill The Dream” into a send-up of classic Warp Records IDM.