Not So Incognito Remixed
Apparently the band Incognito’s signature sound has been in disguise, on the down-low and undercover in need of a face-lift. What is not incognito is that some of the remixes burnish and others are repetitive. Incognito is a “Loose Ends”-style group that does jazzy funk (with the emphasis on jazz) better than banging four/four dance music, thus necessitating the remixes maybe? But if these are the remixes, then the original album must have been really lame, and I think that Gilles Peterson’s liner notes even intimates the same sentiment.
Incognito Has a Tale To Tell
Welcome to More Tales Remixed. The logo is difficult to read due to poor font choice or spacing, making More Tales look like More Talo and leaving you wondering what a “talo” is? These type of efforts are often a subliminal hodgepodge within one concept – let us remix over our originals; an exercise for the remix producer’s glorification mostly.
So Many Great Remixes
Mimitri & DJ Meme retrofit “Step Aside” in O’Jay’s “I Love Music” clothes, Philly International-style, which leaves little to the imagination and made your critic here not want to play it anymore. “Feel The Pressure” has an eighties Roy Ayers feel to it courtesy of the vocals and pace as opposed to the Mark de Clive-Lowe redo. Roy is one of the few who can pull-off the multi-genre thing and make hits out of them. One of the more interesting versions is Christian Prommers touch-up job on “Happy People” which bears more than a slight resemblance to the classic - Li’l Louis’ “French Kiss”. There are two remixed versions of “Freedom to Love” and “Happy People”, and which “Freedom” is better than the other is a toss-up.
Jazzy Remixes?
I feel like I’m listening to “heavy” jazz here more often than not, and really don’t see this getting much club action, nor radio other than the satellite formats because the lords of DJdom may see some of these as trumped-up dance cuts. One reason is that many of these tracks come-off as jazz cuts with an imposed “heavy” background beat, i.e. jazz impersonating club music. Again, trying too hard; I wish the Incogs would have this pseudo-underground music style as their moniker all the time and stretch-out a bit!
“More...” may pass without notice or fanfare in that little of it may ever throb the multi-colored dance floor mass-appeal lights of a club party night, (at least here in the USA) or I’ll eat my Sherlock Holmes-styled hat. Therefore, the original has subtracted merits from the latter, and if I denote the correct coordinate conspiracy, the above-board continuum equals a calculation of two-point-five cosmic stars.
Released January 2009 on Heads Up Records.
