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Bland From Iceland

Gusgus
VIP (single)
(4AD)

If you've ever been at all into GusGus, you know that they've not only released two full-length albums (their debut Polydistortion and the follow-up This Is Normal), but a whole slew of singles as well. Not only do they release domestic versions of these singles, but they release 12 inch versions, as well as who knows how many different two-part import CD singles. If you wanted to get everything they've done, both domestic and foreign, you could easily find yourself with 40 CDs, despite them having only two full releases to their name.

"VIP" is the third single released by the group from the This Is Normal album, and fortunately (?) for us American types, they've made all the mixes available on the two import discs available on one maxi-CD. I throw a question mark in behind the word fortunately, mainly because out of all the singles I've heard thusfar by the group, this one is the least interesting. In fact, the album version of the track isn't one of the highlights of their album, as it was just sort of a standard dance track with a disco-house beat and light vocals.

The remixes of the track range from very boring to decent, but things don't even start grabbing your ear until the very end. After the album version of the track comes a very long mix by Francois K that runs over 10 minutes and simply doesn't change the original enough to justify the length. The dub mix by the very same guy (the next track) clocks in a mere 7 minutes and works slightly better, but not really. After that, there's a fairly plain Masters At Work mix and another long (10+ minutes) dub mix that completely wear you down before the final two tracks manage to inject some life into things.

The Q-Burns Abstract Message remix kicks in a super funky bassline and runs the vocals through many effects and layers them to nice effect while the Dune mix drops the standard 4/4 beat alltogether in favor of some jungle beats. After the mind-numbing pounding of the rest of the album, it's a welcome change. In the end, I can see some of the tracks on the disc being good for the foundation of something to fuel the dancefloor, but when 5 of the 7 versions of a track sound so similar on a single, it just ends up making for a rather uneventful listen. Dissapointing for the group, but I'm sure I'll give them another chance.

Rating: 3

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