Everybody likes something for nothing, but its rare that something free gratis actually delivers an item you might want to keep. So I approached the latest net based freebie with some trepidation. ‘Cease and Desist’ is a compilation of ten remixes from the stable of producer Morgan Page. Now that is a name that quite possibly won’t mean that much to a lot of you. But for those that aren’t quite up to speed, Page is a 24 year old Los Angeles based producer who has recently been making waves in the dance music scene. A prolific worker, last year saw Page adding his touch to no less than sixteen remixes in the States and his latest ‘Landline’ release has been getting rotation and support from the likes of Sasha and Pete Tong.
So as you can probably gather this isn’t amateur hour here, which makes it all the more impressive that we get ten tracks for our perusal with this compilation. It’s a mixed bag of names that he’s throwing at us as well.
Page takes on Coldplay’s “White Shadows” from their X&Y album, it would seem that dressing Chris Martin’s paper thin vocals up in a 4/4 beat seems to be the in vogue thing to do right now and while this is far from being the best cut of the collection it does the unthinkable and makes an otherwise piss poor Coldplay song bearable. David Bowie’s “New Killer Star” gets a filter drenched mini cut up and once again this works. Admittedly Bowie does seem to take a back seat on the track in order to give the track a slightly dark and chattery makeover. Other mixes such as the reworking of Hiperboreal’s “Tijuana For Dummies” move into Latin tinged funky house territory. Equally at home on the radio as well as the dance floor which is where most of this album’s appeal might lie.
Not all of this albums artists are instantly recognisable, I don’t claim an intimate knowledge of Tegan and Sarah’s back catalogue but Page’s selection and reworking of their track “Walking With A Ghost” is something they should be grateful for in terms of profile raising, its right at home in this selection. As is the case with Sam Phillips and the acoustic flavoured pop house mix of “If I Could Write”, and the decidedly swoopy reworking of The Kills “The Good Ones”.
Personal highlights for me are the recuts of Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek” and Dvorak’s “Symphony #9”. The former being a somewhat brave task considering the fragility of the original (not too much has been done here but what has been done works well). The latter simply because the light breakbeat touch works so well.
Wrapping up, what you have here is a fine collection of mixes, don’t worry if you don’t know everyone on here because the tracks kind of speak for themselves and the production is spot on throughout, there’s nice artwork backing the whole thing up and what more could you want when it doesn’t cost you a penny?
