Music Arcades: James vs The Sabres of Paradise: Jam J

Interesting to have this come along so soon after Wah Wah, the album that features the original Jam J, and not that long after the Sabres of Paradise album. On the face of it, expectations were high for this 'clash' of two of my favourite bands around 1994. However, as so often happens, the whole is less than the sum of the parts, and indeed less than either of the parts alone.

Notionally there are two remixes of Jam J, each of which has two 'phases', though the CD player recognises just a single 33-minute track on the CD.

The first phase of the first remix (up to about nine minutes in, by my reckoning) is a dub version of the main bass riff of the original track. The second phase is dire: it's like all the noodly bits from Dark Side of the Moon. Then the next remix kicks in, repeating five notes from the guitar melody to the point of nausea. It gets a bit like Tangerine Dream on a loop at this point, which at least is better than DSotM, but only just — it raises the same hackles in me as some of The White Room did. The final phase (Spaghetti Steamhammer, apparently) kind of jumbles all the previous little musical atoms together. Whether they ever constitute anything so grand as a molecule is a moot point.

Now this (see yesterday) is what I think of as appropriate use of graphic design, by Stylorouge, shown above in the full digipack 'gatefold'.