The Remote – Too Low to Miss
I never heard of this new Global Underground release, never saw it on any other site and I just bumped accross it today on Global Underground’s website. Here’s some more information for you readers!
When Ashley Casselle spotted his then girlfriend chatting to a peroxided spikey haired youth with makeup which reminded him of Daryl Hannah playing the replicant in Bladerunner, he moved away from his spot in the DJ booth at London’s Heaven nightclub and asked her who the ‘weird looking guy’ was. A brief introduction followed and the curiously named Ben Lost chatted about his job at a music distribution company and a passion for David Bowie, electronic music, Guns ‘n Roses and Brian Eno. “We exchanged details and then a week later, to my surprise, I started receiving everything from weird drum ‘n bass to thrash metal from him. He told me he’d been the singer in a band called Charlie when he was 14 and that he’d like a shot at performing on my Ashtrax project,” says Casselle. The year was 2000 and Ashley was taking his DJing out of London and onto an international circuit, playing festivals in Japan, terraces in Ibiza and hot nightclubs all over the world while he honed his DJ skills and experimented with the ever expanding sounds of dub house, breakbeats, indie and electro. This in turn fed and influenced an array of productions and remixes which he developed with Ashtrax partner James Christopher (JC), a microchip whizzkid and studio pro fresh off the train from Sheffield raised on a diet of Aphex Twin and film soundtracks.
At the time they were working on a track set for release on London imprint Deviant records after single releases ‘Kafka’ and ‘Helsinki’ were met with widespread approval. ‘You look so digital’ sang Ben mysteriously on the haunting result, ‘Digital Reason’, a blend of deep suburban bass and frosty electronics with snappy beats. Ben Lost sounded classic yet modern, a bizarrely poppy but intoxicating voice “like the Buzzcock’s Pete Shelley meeting David Bowie on a robot farm” says Ashley.
Now that the music had a voice they quickly became absorbed in creating something exciting and new spurred on by a vision of dark discos, sing-along choruses, icy synths and spiky guitars. Adopting new methods of sound generation Ashley began recording guitars, TVs and strange conversations into a newly acquired Dictaphone, bought from a second-hand shop in LA. “It changed the way I made music forever,” he says, “so I decided that we should call ourselves something to reflect our found sound, songs and general attitude.” Enter the Remote, a name so perfectly tailored for this lot you wonder if they do indeed have a control over these things.
After a spell in the studio the band acquired new member Asad Rizvi, a producer and DJ widely known for his work on labels on End Recordings, Om, and his own imprints Wrong and Reverberations. After an enlightening recording session, their first single, “Please Change Your Mind” was penned telling the story of a doomed relationship and infidelity in a seaside town. Happily set to a pounding bass with a house beat, the song hails a blustery yet ultimately warming eighties melody to boot. Mr. Rizvi then joined the fold and became a fully-fledged member of the Remote.
Together they have created songs such as the unrelenting uplifted melancholy of single ‘She’s Going Out Tonight’ (with Paul Rogers), a true lyrical gem set to a machine funk groove of grinding gothic bass which owes as big a debt to the Cure and the Smiths as it does a night out at (UK clubs) Shindig or Fabric. The flip side ‘Please Change Your Mind’ (Seaside town version) sees Mr. Rizvi and Casselle remixing their own song into a spellbinding fusion of hazy discotheque antics with a bold dance floor presence.
Signed to Global Underground, their debut album ‘Too Low to Miss’ is ready for release and the Remote are now playing live shows somewhere, not that far away.
Tracklist:
01. Pretty Girls make Mothers
02. She’s Going Out Tonight
03. Big Design
04. Play it Rosa
05. In Economy
06. Creeps
07. Right Meat
08. Like You
09. The Greatness of Nothing
10. Bream
11. Lemonade
12. Please Change your Mind