One consequence of Ellen Allien's becoming an ever-more-assured album artist is that her aim tends to be increasingly interior. So hearing her fleshed out for the floor by folks who live there has a push of its own. These three cuts from the longer remix project boil things down nicely. The original "My Tree" is a moody, electro-lined, whispered (not quite sung) piece that hooks on what sounds like a treated woodwind. Ripperton's version reworks that woodwind's earthier resonances, thanks to its dabs of dawn-coming-up synth and a descending-tom-tom figure that accompanies the heavy disco thump at every turn. The bass drone, in this company, even feels somewhat organic, even though it clearly isn't.
Camea, of the micro-minimal label Clink, goes the other way with her treatment of "Schlumi." Allien's version starts out as a fizzy disco loop and then gradually frizzles into other directions; Camea opts for spacey techno with a dreamy central synth figure and nicely deployed percussion effects. "Searching" was a Dust bonus track and a B-side on the Our Utopie EP. (It's also on the City Sound Berlin comp from late last year, where it transfers rather nicely to a Now-style hits format.) It's a Fingers Inc.-style instrumental that builds to a heavily phased and pitch-shifted burst of vocal snippets, then settles into a stomping synth arpeggio. Shonky's remix gives it a black-lit fluorescent sense: everything from the synth-bass (played fast to rise gradually) to the droplets of crisp percussion to ghost-like vocal drops seems to be shivering and standing still at the same time.
Buy Ellen Allien – Dust (Remixes) at
  
Tracklist: Ellen Allien – Dust (Remixes)
 A My Tree (Ripperton's Backlash Remix)
B1 Schlumi (Camea Remix)
B2 Searching (Shonky Remix)
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