If the laptop is now the ubiquitous instrument of choice, and the remix the starting point of preference, does it mean that pop music has eaten itself whole?

Certainly, the above laptop+remix methodology is the jumping-off point for a whole host of average and below-average music which has, over time, formed an online musical tidal sewage-wave of jittery-glitchy-“multi-layered”-pitch-shifted meh.

This may or may not have influenced the decision by The Hype Machine to include a “No Remixes” tickbox.

The Hype Machine, of course, also includes a “Remixes Only” tickbox. And it’s because when a remix is good, they’re usually very good.

This is simply because remixes must stand bold in comparison to the original – whether you consciously acknowledge the comparison or not. We’re all aware that at some point the talented remixer has thought, “I’m going to have to make a song out of another song, so I better do a decent job of it,” and this really does count for something.

Anyway. With this previous blah blah, I’m either building Deadbear‘s remix of Barbarossa‘s Turbine up quite a bit, or setting him up for a mighty fall. Guess which one it is!

Yes, it’s the former, because even if you don’t listen to the original song first (and I recommend you don’t listen to it quite yet, simply because it might colour expectations), it’s clear that whatever knob-twiddling and cutting-and-pasting and such-and-such that has gone on behind the scenes has crafted a song of delicacy, deftness and desiccation.

That’s right, desiccation: this song is extra dry – the sound of sugar tumbling onto aluminium, or a fingernail running along the top of a meringue – except, of course, with all the tasty bass wobble and washes of silver sound you’d hope for in a song like this.

The Deadbear treatment has resulted in a wholly new song; only scant echoes of the original remain. And that’s almost exactly how it should be. Mmmm, delicious.

MORE: deadbear.co.uk