Hydrahead Records
2005
Oceanic Remixes/Reinterpretations
About This Album
Isis plays metal. But it's no stretch to consider the group alongside devotees to drone, sludge, noise, or blip -- all those artistic sublevels spill out on the papery fringe, anyway. And that's why Oceanic: Remixes/Reinterpretations is such a powerful project. The collaborators here are continuing Oceanic's restless evolutionary cycle, so their results are free to be loud, soft, or somewhere in the foggy between. Of the 13 tracks featured on this two-disc set, 12 originally appeared on a series of 12" EPs; disc two's second version of Tim Hecker's "Carry" interpretation is exclusive. Hecker's "Carry [First Version]" elongates the seesaw notes in Isis' original, stretching them with ropes of warping electric guitar and letting a soft ambient texture sift in toward the end. Christian Fennesz's work with "Weight" has an equally powerful gravity -- somewhere near its halfway mark he suspends the track in a glitchy loop that's as captivating as it is minimal. There are two takes on "Maritime." Mike Patton's involves various tricks from his bag of scary vocal whimsy, like an insane child prodigy taking drugs for fun, and Teledubgnosis turns in a lengthy version informed with splashes and echoes of their experimental dub, as well as washes and whispers -- like a city outside the window -- that approach ambient.
Track List

Disc 1 (try track 3)

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Disc 2 (try tracks 1 and 3)

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