AMG Review of Kicking a Dead Pig: Mogwai Songs Remixed [Eye-Q]

Vincent Jeffries
All Music Guide

Originally offered on Eye-Q Records, this disc was also packaged together with another Eye-Q release, Mogwai Fear Satin Remixes, and distributed through Jetset. Like the band that inspires them, the DJs and producers at work on Kicking a Dead Pig: Mogwai Songs Remixed go to both noisy and gentle extremes as they infiltrate their Young Team-era cuts. Things get kicked off on the softer side as mostly mellow mixes of "Like Herod" (Hood) and "Helicon 2" (Max Tundra) present a breezy, meditative soundscape. This pattern holds for the most part as the remaining cuts overlay hip-hop, techno, and other dance-oriented beats onto generally mellow Mogwai tracks, with the chaotic Alec Empire's Face the Future remix of "Like Herod" being the noisy exception. While there are some decidedly uninspired white-noise explosions, there is also enough interesting material on Kicking a Dead Pig: Mogwai Songs Remixed to interest devoted fans. New listeners should probably avoid this compilation, however, as Mogwai's trademark subtlety of texture and performance dynamics are aggressively (and in some cases destructively) modified on this release.