Artist: Rene Amesz
Title: Fragile
Label: Little Mountain Recordings
By: Jason Calvert | 12 January 2006
Tracklist:

• A: Underground Movement Dub
• B: Chris Lake Mix

Rene Amesz "Fragile"

Sander Kleinenberg's Little Mountain Recordings is a label I've found to be quite hit and miss in the past. I never know quite what to expect from their next release in terms of quality. Rene Amesz's 'Fragile' is showcased on this release here, and the first thing one may notice is the absence of the Original Mix. Available as a limited one sided promo some time back, it would have been nice to see it given a proper release, given how amazing the track was. So we are presented with what is in fact a remix disc here.

The first mix comes from the Underground Movement outfit, which consists of Rene Amesz himself alongside Peter Gelderblom. It's a chugging 4/4 track with some gritty percussion which is trademark of Underground Movement. The vocal is stripped right back, and only appears in heavily filtered snippets. The repetition of the line "so fragile" when passed through some heavy filtering got on my nerves after a while, and killed the overall mood of the track for me. If you dig a heavy sound, you might find this mix attractive, but it just wasn't polished enough for my liking.

However Chris Lake provides a refreshing 4/4 take on the original. The percussion is very reminiscent of his recent stormer 'Changes', and a new bassline gives the track a much brighter feel than the flipside. Again the vocal is not fully utilised, but the snippets which are used are scattered tastefully across the composition, and work themselves in well. Lake has added many of his own elements to the track, making it very much his own, whilst still being able to recognize elements from the Original. Whilst this remix doesn't come anywhere close to the Original, I could really appreciate seeing the track take a very different direction.

When hearing that 'Fragile' had been picked up for release, I was really looking forward to hearing some strong remixes. The mixes presented here weren't quite what I had in mind, but the Chris Lake Mix is certainly worth a listen. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Original Mix, I strongly urge you to try and track down a copy, as it is perhaps one of Rene Amesz's finest tracks to date, and I am a big fan of most of his work!