Shark Remixes Vol. 2 – Son Lux

Release Date: January 20th, 2009
Itunes release: HERE
(a physical release of all four EPs will be released in 2010)

Art by David Stith

Son Lux is Ryan Lott. He lived for six years in Cleveland, Ohio and earned a reputation as a versatile and zealous collaborator. Equally at ease in the creative company of choreographers, classical musicians, and break dancers, Lott cut his teeth spear-heading multi-disciplinary “performance parties,” composing music for dance companies throughout the US, and collaborating with bands across many genres. In the cracks of time and energy between all his collaborations, “Son Lux” was born out of an urge to finally set about making an album. It began as an experiment and a personal creative challenge. What Lott, as Son Lux, wove together over 4 years in his attic studio is the album many critics are calling one of the best records of 2008. At War With Walls and Mazes is an impressive debut which earned Son Lux the title of Best New Artist by NPR’s All Songs Considered as well as rave reviews from ARTFORUM, Pitchfork, Paste and XLR8R.

After Asthmatic Kitty asked Lott to remix Thousand Shark’s Teeth, the second full-length from My Brightest Diamond, Son Lux restrained himself from hearing any of the songs he remixed until after he was completely finished working, keeping with his custom. “This enables me to glimpse the soul of the song in its parts, rather than its whole,” Son Lux says. He then takes the pieces of bone and tissue from the session files and mends them together to create a new thing, stitching in his own pieces and parts, unbiased by an “end result” or preconceived form. The outcome is indeed a collection of new lifeforms, whose souls have withstood Son Lux’s process, reincarnated into new living things.

Fortunately for Son Lux, his specimens had good karma. This graceful Dr. Frankenstein approach to the My Brightest Diamond material has created four very distinct remixes, ranging from the old-school electro mashed with New Orleans horn funk treatment of “Apples,” elegiac ambient strings overtop minimalist post-rock drumming on “The Diamond,” break driven cutup rocker of the anthem “Inside A Boy,” to the lowrider chamber piano chopped “To Pluto’s Moon.” The adventurous stylistic range of each remix is a reflection of the EP as a whole; it is at once many things with Shara Worden’s original vocals as the cords holding them all in perfect tension.

1. Apples
2. The Diamond
3. Inside A Boy
4. To Pluto’s Moon