Paradoxx- Contamination

Artist: Paradoxx
CD Title: Contamination
Label: Cold Fusion Music
Reviewer: Joshua Heinrich
Date: 12/5/06

Featuring remixes of material from the albums New Devotion and Atomika, Paradoxx's Contamination is a relatively cohesive and fairly strong collection of reworkings and reinterpretations. With remix artists ranging from The Echoing Green to The Last Dance's Rick Joyce, the album, while largely leaning towards the electronic/dance side of the spectrum, does manage to incorporate some of the same stylistic diversity that marked the band's proper studio output.

Both remixes of "Vampyr" stand out, the "Creta mix" from Rick Joyce and Creta being, as expected, far more guitar-oriented and powerfully atmospheric, with The Echoing Green's "Anita Blake's Nightmare Mix" being a remarkably different club-oriented leap into dark electronica. Other top cuts include an excellent trance mix of Atomika's title track from Vince Guzzardo and the beautiful sonic crafting of Colossal Spin's excellent take on "Technologi", danceable with a lovely sense of layered ambience and intense guitar sampling.

Of the other tracks, Static:Soul's "New Devotion (Sloppy Mix)" is noteworthy if just for the fact that it's stylistically different from the rest of the album, a rough industrial cacophony of a remix that's actually rather compelling. The disc's other central tracks, Dead Agent's sparse dance version of "Alien" and Regenerator's slow "Radium Lover (Curie Mix)" probably being the best of what's left, are relatively weaker. The disc also includes three bonus tracks: a lovely acoustic guitar based version of "Atomika", Paradoxx's high energy take on the Jet Circus track "Godless Happiness", and a loud rock remix of "Witch Hunt" from the debut album by TEMPLAR.

Like most remix collections, Paradoxx's Contamination is a bit of a mixed bag, both stylistically and quality-wise, but there are quite a few worthwhile standouts and interesting interpretations here that will likely leave fans of the originals satisfied. Its inconsistencies may have listeners occasionally reaching for the skip button, but, as a whole, Contamination is a decent remix album whose strengths are worth exploring.