Alex Arnout: welcome to my list of people who can do no wrong. His name is there for a variety of reasons, but to be specific it’s his Sound-Byte EP on Turquoise Blue and now his malevolently addictive remix of “Elastik Phone”, released May 7th on gorgeous vinyl and digitally from Underbelly Records. I’m sure the original mix and Matt Tolfrey & Sam Russo’s mix are fine but you’re going to have to read about them somewhere else, because try as I might I can’t get Arnout’s beats out of my head. Without a single word spoken by a single human voice, Arnout crafts a hook that lops people’s heads off. Delicate, as if crafted from water and likely to lose its shape, it repeats throughout the entire 6 minutes, accented and ornamented with short bursts of FX and kicks and it may sound like a mess but it coheres like a great, glorious hymn stirring from the nave up to the balconies.
There’s nothing of what you’d associate with the word “anthem” in Arnout’s productions and remixes, but more than any spikey-haired fist-pumping Beatport hero, the guy has his ways of getting under your skin.
