[Ghostly International]

Most electronic music lovers are probably not familiar with the work of Justin Broadrick under his older incarnations as the guitarist for one of Birmingham’s heaviest metal groups, Napalm Death or his own band Godflesh. Over the years Broadrick’s work has become increasingly focused on drone and shoegaze, leading him to completely forego the guitars for his most recent project and fix his attention on the synths. This release comes from the remix album of an earlier work as Jesu, the album titled Pale Sketches Demixed. Broadrick’s “Gone Version” of “Can I Go Now” finds him playing about with a saccharine laced, Autotuned, vocoded vocal over hot, fuzzy, concentric keys. There is a certain amount of pleasurable hypnosis to the layering of melodies and blurred lines of the statically charged percussion, but those vocals almost presage the onset of an unchecked electro-pop track.

Donnacha Costello drags the track back through the heyday of 90’s ambient electronica, mixing equal parts Boards of Canada with Aphex Twin to come up with a dreamy, fantastical rendering of “Can I Go Now.” He polishes up the synths until they are gleaming chrome, and subdues the vocals, masking the Autotuned pop with sepia tones. It’s the most engaging of the three mixes here, though falls short of Costelllo’s usual high quality when making his own tracks in this vein. Danish duo Syntaks, a Ghostly label-mate of Pale Sketcher add their own slant on the track, stretching out the vocals with that of their own Anna Cecilia and floating them up to the heavens on a bed of strings and pads. Some downtempo drums add the heartbeat to the remix, though they mix these up with cheap Casio tone presets for a nice contrast of plastic and authentic. A soft, reassuring bass swells over the melodies like cresting waves adding to the fluid nature of this mix. The three different options of “Can I Go Now (Gone Version)” all contain within them apparent beauty, but listening to them side by side feels a bit underwhelming, and like a dream, the feeling of beauty it inspires soon subsides.