Artist: Shlomi Aber
Title: State Of No One (Remixes)
Label: Renaissance Recordings
By: Carleton Neil | 29 October 2008
Tracklist:

• A: Shlomi Aber Mix
• B: Shlomi Aber Deep Dub

Shlomi Aber "State Of No One (Remixes)"

In October of 2007 Shlomi Aber released his debut LP 'State of No One' on Renaissance. In a year saddled with big releases, you might not expect from a relative newcomer with just a handful of singles to release a full-length album that holds its own against the likes of Trafik and U.N.K.L.E., but 'State of No One' is an album that demands your attention: on your iPod, at work, and in your car on the way back from your club of choice.

Which brings up a good point. 'State of No One' wasn't targeted at the dance floor but more as part of your music repertoire. Aber's album was simultaneously morose but sly, with a wistful curiosity that makes it hard to pigeonhole. Almost a year later, he has returned to his body of work to remix the title track. The original 'State of No One' was a bleary-eyed, down-tempo number and might be the last track you'd expect to hear in a club but he's reworked things into a jaunt that makes sense for an up-tempo environment.

Shlomi's remix doesn't retain much at all from the original, sans the vocal which is now a stuttering explanation instead of a rambling diatribe and some now rhythmically loopy fills that were previously subtle sustained washes across the track. It is with these fills and a bit of a kick that the remix begins, adding a layer of quietly clacking claps parsed with brief cuts of vocal. It becomes obvious with the addition of metallic conga that this is a syncopated tribal affair, made all the more interesting by the spacious sustained flutes that push the track through each phrase, an amount of which you've not heard the likes of since Andy Page and Babs' 'Oblivia Newton Bomb'.

The 'Deep Dub' is just that, a plodding game of point-counterpoint between throaty kicks and overbearing hi-hats. Those same loopy fills from Shlomi's mix sit at syncopation, though they've been tightened up a bit, pitch-shifted and touched with reverb. In the breakdown the vocal returns, true to its form in the album version but hit with reverb as well. In the remix the flutes acted as fills and gave the track energy and space, but in this dub the fills that chatter by eek out a little elbow room, allowing the track to maintain its loungey, background nature.

While a self-interpretation isn't extremely rare, it's another matter altogether when it comes to genre-bending. Shlomi Aber has taken his 'State of No One' from a track that would sit pretty next to Boards of Canada to a thumper in his traditional style. The twist on things is that others are arguably better at remixing his work than Aber himself; Shlomi's remix is contending with Group Therapy's remix of 'Tel Aviv Garden' and Valentino Kanzyani's remix of 'Moods'. His 'State of No One' remixes are out now on Renaissance, and while Shlomi is no slouch, it can be hard to one-up yourself.