Danish Post-Punk Outfit The Foreign Resort Interview Their Remixers for New “OutRemixed” Album

Photo Credit Michele Mozzillo

Danish Post-Punk outfit The Foreign Resort are set to release a new remix album this month featuring reworked tracks from their critically acclaimed 2019 album Outnumbered. In addition to this new release, the band has also recently debuted their video for the track “Obsessing” from Outnumbered, which is also remixed on the new LP OutRemixed by New Canyons.

Ahead of the release of OutRemixed, The Foreign Resort spoke with members of TRAITRS, Creux Lies, NITE, Bootblacks and more, on their thoughts on reworking each track for the new remix album.

“When we first started reaching out to bands asking them to remix our songs for the album OutRemixed, we thought of it as a fun way of hearing how our music would sound when interpreted by our good friends who play in bands that sound different from us, thus getting a different approach to the songs. We’re fans of all the bands who have done the remixes, so we considered it a total win win. Then once the remixes started coming back, we realized that sending our tracks to fellow musicians for remixing, they came back more as remakes. Some of our instruments were removed and instead new guitars, drums, keyboard and even vocals by Candélabre’s Cindy Sanchez and Creux Lies’ Ean Clevenger had been added – which we really loved!”

In a chat with Sean from TRAITRS, he said “Half the fun with remixes is hearing something subtle in the song that the artist didn’t pick up on. A path not taken so to speak. Remixes allow me an opportunity to extrapolate a whole new song out of just a fragment or two from the original.” Chatting with the remixers about their approaches, we realized some had things in common, other had different approaches. Michaël De Almeida from Candélabre said, “To me a good remix has to stimulate your brain and ears with a of back and forth movement between the original track and the reworked one. You have to be humble and creative at the same time towards the song, and bring something new to it with your own sensibility while using a sound material that is not from you. It’s finding the right balance in combining two particular approaches in one single song.” At the other end Bootblacks’ Barrett Hiatt said “We look at remixing the same way we look at writing for Bootblacks. Anything goes. We try not to limit ourselves by any expectation of what people think we should sound like, and simply write what excites us at that moment. Remixes are great because we can use them as exercises in crafting, in ways we might not think to do otherwise.”

The result has made OutRemixed an extremely diverse album. In the remixers’ own words:

She is Lost (HAPAX Remix)

“When I first listened to the song, I fell in love with the vocal line and the lyrics and immediately thought it would be nice to work on a retro wave version slower than the original version and reminiscent of the electronic soundtracks of romantic movies of the 80s. I imagined a masquerade party where two people fell in love only from the looks, dancing without ever meeting and then in the crowd were lost without ever finding each other again. So I started looking for synth and guitar sounds that were dusky and melancholic.”

Burn in the Night (NITE Remix)

“After hearing TFR’s song, Burn In The Night, we had visions of a sleek, black, and futuristic motorcycle racing through the desert at night. We were worried at first that TFR wouldn’t like the remix because of how structurally different it is. We made that decision in the creative process based off feel, and we were happy with the outcome.“

Hearts Fade Out (Then Comes Silence Remix)

“I wanted to make it sound like Mikkel was crawling around in a snake pit with a high fever delirium. What kind of snake pit? That’s up to your mind to decide.”

Obsessing (New Canyons Remix)

“I love busting out my old as fuck drum machines for remixes.”
“I was channeling some early Ministry, Skinny Puppy vibes…”

Send Your Heart to the Riot (Creux Lies Remix)

“This remix was the first opportunity to get all four of us in a room to work on something new together since our initial writing sessions for Goodbye Divine. Our idea from the get go was to take the track into a more danceable way and bring out some more light in an already beautiful track. After we laid the sequenced arp and drums down with Mikkel’s vocals, everything seemed to click, this was the vibe to go forward with and the ideas just kept coming. Hearing the remix get a live treatment was amazing and they definitely did it justice!”

Hot Summers (Melted Mirror Remix)

“I was thinking about all the NIN singles I used to listen to as a teenager and how hearing the remixes was often the most exciting part. […] My approach to the remix was influenced by some of the NIN remixes. I felt that the production on the original song was already top notch, so decided to try and make it totally different rather than just ‘pump it up’.”

Clouds (Candélabre Remix)

“…we removed the more dynamic elements of the song: we cut down the bass and most of the drums and we tried to bring those melodic elements up, like the guitar arpeggios and the atmospheric keyboards parts. We added slowed drum machine parts, something more crawling or tribal and a fat low arpeggio synth bass line with a different melodic progression that gives Mikkel singing maybe a more epic feel to it.” “Finally, Cindy’s voice added vocal layers, which create a foggy celestial mood on the track. […] we wanted to leave the door open for ethereal soundscapes and gentle melancholic vibes.”

Clouds (Vapour Trail Remix by Gordon Young)

“I loved the original’s sense of brooding density and thought I’d try to keep that but steer the production in a completely different direction and see where we ended up. The core instrumentation of the remix is based around 3 interweaving modular lines, with loads of little details in the background along with snippets of the original instrumentation, and the drums are all synthesised ‘on the fly’ – no samples! Rather than stretch out the format I tried to keep it quite brief, to retain the melodic impact of the song, and kept Mikkel’s excellent vocal up front.”

On how these new remixes influenced their music going forward, The Foreign Resort adds:

“As an unexpected bonus, we found new ideas in the remixes and decided we would use Creux Lies’ remix of “Send Your Heart to the Riot” and NITE’s remix of “Burn in the Night” as inspiration for how we perform the songs live. We did this once before when Andre Obin remixed our song “Suburban Depression” back in 2016. You could say that we’re remixing the remixes into new versions played at concerts. So, lookout for a more uptempo “Send Your Heart to the Riot” as well as much more simple and fuzz guitar-infused version of “Burn in the Night” this autumn.

OutRemixed will be released on November 19th via Artoffact Records.

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