¿GOT MIXXX?
13th Planet Records CD, February 2011
Executive Producer: Angelina Jourgensen
Producer: Alien Jourgensen
1st Engineer: Sammy D’Ambruoso
Drum Programming: Sammy D’Ambruoso
Engineer: Erie Loch
All MiXXXes by: Erie Loch
Mastering: Dave Donnelly
Artwork Design & Layout: Kade Burt
The packaging is a slim card sleeve, the same as Sex-O Mixxx-O and Mixxxes of the Molé. The interior artwork is a male bodybuilder photographed at crotch level on the left, and a recycling of the ¿Got Cock? interior art on the right. The disc itself was an amusing surprise: A simple, near-textless design with a red background and giant white “$”. Combined with the theme of the remix names that sound like fake tracks made up by members of this forum (“Pay Me Now Mixxx,” “Feed Me Support Me Mixxx”, “Where’s My Hand Out Mixxx,” etc.), it looks like someone at 13th Planet has a sense of humour about the cash-in nature of the Mixxx series…
The first track opens with a porno sample (a recurring theme on tracks 1, 2 and 7, though not prominent enough to be annoying in my opinion) and a sort of spooky keyboard part that immediately sets a darker tone. The remix of “Trojan Horse” is dominated by the extremely downtuned sludge guitar to create an ugly, dirty mood unlike the relatively cheerful original. As the album moves along through a somewhat less interesting mix of “Filthy Senoritas” the drum samples also begin to get heavier and more interesting than anything I can remember from ¿Got Cock?, bringing to mind the classic era of industrial dance music. “Dykes” is possibly the most improved track, combining the predatory sludge stabs with stompable beats that make me think of someone hitting a metal trash can. “Juice” also gets a rather awesome remix, though not necessarily beating the original, with some fun added synth and sampled industrial steel-hammering percussion in the style of Germans like Die Krupps. “Piss Army” starts out with breakbeats and cannonballs, and has some pretty weird noise squelches in the bridge…
And then Josh says the retarded “one of the founding members, like Phildo” line, and my enjoyment of the CD rapidly goes downhill. Perhaps the remixes are not actually much worse on the second half, but the fact is that Erie has made his point by now and the novelty factor is worn off. “Fuck Money” was a song I liked on the original, and the subtle tweaks to it here aren’t particularly exciting, especially since it was suitable to the theme for it to just be a cheesy hard rock song. “Bitch Addictive”, “Air Traffic Control” and “Poke-A-Hot-Ass” get a bit sludgier but don’t escape being recognizable as those songs, which means they still suck. “Me So Horny” gets a not-bad industrial dance mix that is probably the best of the Revco versions, but of course isn’t going to replace the 2 Live Crew version for most people.
To sum up, ¿Got Mixxx? starts out surprisingly strong but is weighed down by some weak tracks later on. Overall, I think the basic premise of this album was an admirable one: bring the heavy bass and beats back to Revco. Sometimes it works quite well, and the album’s flaws should really be blamed more on the source material than the remixer. I know Erie is a big fan of the oldschool Revolting Cocks releases, and this is arguably closer to a Wax Trax! album than anything else on 13th Planet lately. ¿Got Mixxx? isn’t really a “remixy” remix album full of experiments and genre-flipping gimmicks, but rather just an alternate version of what the original ¿Got Cock? could/should have been like. The downside is that Erie’s mixxxing approach is to basically never mess around with songwriting and vocals, so anything you didn’t like in that department from ¿Got Cock? is still here. If you’re still somewhat tolerant of new Revco and are on the fence about getting this, I’d say get it, especially if you tend to pay more attention to instruments/production than lyrics. If you can’t stand new Revco at all, then of course this one isn’t enough of a departure to be worth your time.