Barbara Morgenstern has always been an elusive artist. She’s flirted with the world of techno in tantalizing ways — working with producers as varied as Thomas Fehlmann, DNTEL and, on this set of remixes, Hefty’s Telefon Tel Aviv, Kompakt standouts The Rice Twins and French DJ Chloe — without ever fully giving into it, choosing instead to infuse electronic elements into her productions while maintaining pop structures and instrumentation. In 2002, she produced a high profile remix of DNTEL and Ben Gibbard’s “This Is the Dream of Evan Chan” and in 2006 she released the gorgeous, frantic “The Operator” single to much critical acclaim. But at the heart of it all, Ms. Morgenstern is a pop singer with an ear for many genres, which is why it feels slightly strange (if a propos) to be reviewing her latest single on a website dedicated to electronic music.
Like many of her album tracks, the focus of “Come to Berlin” is on Morgenstern’s rich voice and stately piano; slow minor chords are intertwined with doleful strings and melodies as she croons away, lamenting the current state of Berlin. It’s an ironic and even incendiary song (from what I’ve gathered — only half of the lyrics are in English), considering Berlin’s reputation as a trendy techno Mecca, but it’s no less beautiful for its plaintiveness. The EP’s first remix, a seven minute elegy by Stockholm’s Rice Twins, builds on this melancholy tone, emphasizing the strings with low octave synths, a slower beat and a wonderfully vocodered version of Morgenstern’s voice. Denser and busier than most Rice Twins work, their version proves to be an interesting complement to the original. The Telefon Tel Aviv mix follows, pitting Morgenstern’s voice against a sheen of synths and fast drum blips; it’s standard remix fare, but it does what it was meant to do adequately. Chloe’s remix surprised me the most, picking up on the subtle discord in Morgenstern’s chord progression and crafting an accordingly disharmonious track from it, ditching vocals, piano and strings to build an ominous, pounding club mix to its climax instead. All in all, a solid but not extraordinary release that bodes well for Barbara Morgenstern’s upcoming album, BM, and to a lesser extent the remixes to come. (post by Jeremy Cohen)
