Weekend Intermission – Obscure Amulets (USA) – Incantations (EP track) – Slim Vic remix (Sweden)

Weekend Intermission is our regular feature where we look at an artist or band not from the Nordic countries, just to mix things up a bit. In this case it combines a non-Nordic artist with a Nordic re-mixer.

Obscure Amulets is the solo project of American composer and violinist Hilary Davis, and this song, ‘Incantations’ is from her debut, four-track eponymous EP, which was released in January.

It seems that a few months ago, Swedish producer, mixer, DJ, composer, ‘turntable-ist’ (aagh that sounds like an insult like ageist, sexist and racist!) and label owner (Lamour Records) Slim Vic (Zeidner) received a promo link to that EP and was sufficiently taken with it to politely ask if he could do a remix. Et viola! Here it is.

To be honest, I’m not that hot on remixes generally. I was put off a few years ago by a series of them made for a song from an artist from the same part of the world as Slim Vic (Gävle), Ida Long, who seems to have left the scene now. Only one of six of them was an improvement on the original and I found that weirdly off-putting.

So I opted not to listen to the original here.

As a standalone piece it wins by way of how its mixes the traditional with the modern, the former encapsulated by time worn strings and piano interludes and the latter by a swirling synthesised sound

It seems to be driven by a steam engine and that got me thinking about what it might represent, as the musical background to say a documentary or a TV series or a movie.

The most obvious subject to me is something like a major change in the way the world works, such as the ending of the Agricultural/Artisan era in favour of the Industrial Revolution, or perhaps more pertinently the shift from the Industrial Revolution to the Technological one some 20 years ago.

You might hear and ‘see’ something quite different, such as a journey through the cosmos or might prefer simply to chill to it but that’s the magic of this sort of ambient music. It can take you to places you wouldn’t believe, to misquote Rutger Hauer.

As Slim Vic says, from New York via Gävle to the rest of the world (stopping off in Manchester).

This is a Soundcloud version. You can also listen to (and buy) it on Bandcamp.

Bandcamp track link: https://obscureamulets.bandcamp.com/track/incantations-slim-vic-remix

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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/slimvic