Middlemarch - The Mirror and the Light (2019)

The duo of Dimitris Avramidis and Ross Baker, better known as Middlemarch, join the Carpe Sonum roster after the quietly devastating Wolf Hall, issued on Time Released Sound in 2014. This disc of remixes retains the magisterial heft and splendor of that sterling debut, with all the album’s participants building on the duo’s template while adding numerous idiosyncratic touches of their own. The opening “Visitation”, strangely enough, doesn’t really prepare you for the detached, pixillated sparsescape of “The Dead Complain of their Burial” but its cinematic vocabulary is as revealing in its own atmospheric way as its predecessor. Across the record’s timespan, the collective of remixers that includes Mick Chillage, Maps and Diagrams, Darren McClure, Ambidextrous, Neotropic, Off Land, and others wrestle with the duo’s blossoming & Budd-ing tendencies, reflecting the subtly shifting piano motifs and flurrying electronic textures in their own inimitable fashion. Chillage especially shines, as his interpretation of “A Painter’s Eye” is a thing of regal beauty. Neotropic’s post-classical side is also especially notable, as her version of “Visitation" channels a strange, quasi-glitchy/ivory-tickled hybrid, maximizing a myriad of odd warbles and Derbyshire-esque touches to produce over six minutes of pure pleasure. So rarely do remix albums succeed on their own merits; here’s one where the sum easily transcends its component parts, setting a new gold standard by which successive others will no doubt be judged.