Back In Your Head (Bill Hamel and Kevin St Croix Remix)

Song: Back In Your Head (Bill Hamel and Kevin St Croix Remix)
Artist: Tegan & Sara
Album: Back In Your Head (Single)





The worlds of Alternative/Indie Rock and club culture rarely meet. My only theory to this divide is essentially their differences in musical structure and the performance that goes into the music. Indie Rock fans go to a lot of shows and like to see their musical heroes onstage, jumping around, or emoting directly to their audience. You go to a club and if you even see the DJ, you basically just see them fiddling with knobs and switching records. But there are bands and musicians that are “indie” and/or “alternative” and have enjoyed the crossover, or fully embrace electronic/club type music… if not but through a hipster lens. (Hot Chip and Franz Ferdinand come to mind.)

But when it comes to full out club mixes of Alt-Rock music, there usually are not a lot to talk about. Some artist, like Tori Amos, have literally found a whole new fan base from techno fans. Starting with tracks from her second solo record, Tori saw remixes of her songs become club hits, and soon just about every Tori single was reworked by a handful of top DJ talent. I’ve heard bootleg remixes of everyone from Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Radiohead, but again are rare… and sometimes of debatable quality.

So it was with a degree of surprise when I found out that Tegan and Sara had commissioned a slew of dance mixes for the first single off their last record “The Con.” “Back in Your Head” was a favorite of mine and I really liked the club mixes that they released for the single. While they have been “remixed” before by The Rentals and Morgan Page (both on “Walking With the Ghost,”) the girls hadn’t given the full remix treatment to a single. I’m happy to say that they all work quite well. Morgan Page takes them on once again with nice results, and DJ legends Tiesto and Josh Harris create floor-filling mixes that really bang.

There have been a few articles written about a new underground movement that is mixing indie rock with disco, or just flat out disco that is marketed, aimed at, and created by the hipster indie circuit. This would delight me as I am such a dance music fan and believe EVERYONE would be happier dancing (You should be dancin’!) So these mixes of current indie darlings Tegan and Sara really makes sense.

My favorite of the mixes, hands-down is the epic end-of-the-night mix by Bill Hamel and Kevin St. Croix. At just over eight minutes it’s a commitment, but has a great build and really best utilizes the piano vamp from the song, masking it enough at first so you’re unsure what it is… but if you are familiar with the original it then grabs you. Once they start singing the chorus you’re up and moving like a monkey. So I suggest that for your next hipster party, you get them boys and girls all hopped up on Pabst Blue Ribbon, hit them with a few Hot Chip, Franz, or upbeat Bjork tracks, and then put this on. You’ll be having a winner!

Enjoy.

DJ Tiesto Video Remix



And this is actually quite adorable...