Lowbit revisit last year’s beautiful ‘Life & Death’ EP from Miraculum, offering up two remixes by David Granha of ‘Requiem for Two Fading Flowers’ and two of ‘As a Heart Started to Beat’ by Ewan Rill.
David Granha makes his fifth appearance remixing for the label here. Both his remixes of ‘Requiem’ seriously beef the track up, taking it squarely into peak-time progressive techno territory. The centrepiece of his ‘Big Crunch’ remix is a wall of bass that powers-up two minutes in and keeps the listener on the ropes for the remainder of the track, while huge snare rolls and snatches of melody from the original track ensure that the tension levels stay high.
Granha’s ‘Quasar’ remix lacks the raw energy of his ‘Big Crunch’, but for my money it’s the more distinctive and interesting of the two. It’s fairly similar in structure and mood, but interstellar sound effects, a properly wobbly bassline, and a slightly stronger nod to Miraculum’s original combine to lend it a bit more atmosphere. Even without the crunch, this’ll do serious damage.
Ewan Rill may be a newcomer to Lowbit, but his smooth progressive sound will be familiar to fans of labels like Stripped Digital, Vurtical and Balkan Connection. He keeps his remix of ‘As a Heart…’ light and melodic, a chugging bassline providing the backbone and layered synth lines adding the flesh. It’s very pretty, though I did find myself wishing it was a bit less gentle and a bit more exciting.
Rill’s additional ‘light’ remix is virtually identical, as far as I can tell, except that it features a groovier bassline. I slightly prefer the light version, but it definitely felt a bit redundant to include both, given how similar they are to each other.
Sometimes allowing an artist to turn in more than one remix of the same track can result in something a bit special, something that they wouldn’t have dared to do if they were limited to just one version. Unfortunately, that hasn’t really happened here, and given the strength of the source material from Miraculum, I’d have much preferred to see a more diverse package from Lowbit. That said, the Granha remixes pack a lot of punch – you’ll definitely want to have them in your arsenal. 7/10
