Planningtorock / Living It Out Remix Ep

DFA

"Living it Out" – perhaps the most unabashedly danceable song on Janine "Planningtorock" Rostron's DFA debut album W – comes on (that is to say, seduces) in just the right ways. The song is all addictive disco, with synthesized string skitterings and Rostron's voice purring out (she sounds like a futuristic Eartha Kitt here) a perfect melody that somehow gets even better at the chorus. It's pure pleasure upsurge from beat-driven start to pizzicatto end, the kind of song that lets you know that, amidst Rostron's many musical idiosyncracies, included is the ability to write a song that simply drags you out onto the dancefloor.  The Jackson remix is less dense and, in an odd role reversal for PTR, more off-kilter than her original. The warm disco of the album track is cooled here and things take on a more regimented pace, while Rostron's vocals have been cut down into breathy, metronomic exhalations. The Cosmodelica remix rearranges house – by adding bouncing bass near the music's foreground and giving everything a vaguely more relaxed feel, while somehow maintaining an upbeat pace. Just past the song's midpoint, the energy – and the depth of sound – kicks up a notch, with all the sonic elements meeting and proceeding apace. Billy Lock – aka Felix Martin from Hot Chip – offers up a reworking that starts off feeling deeply anticipatory, the beat set against disquieting bass pangs and a slow rising electric scribble, all of which serve to temper the original's carefree spirit.   Meanwhile, Denmark's When Saints Go Machine have transformed the song into a lilting, lovely five minutes of electronic pop – they've remade the track into something soft and fluid, with PTR's vocals raised an octave, so they flow as smoothly as the new mix in which they sit. Brooklyn, New York's Laurel Halo offers a complete renovation. She combines synth swells and washes into diaphanous, ambient layers of sound, then lets PTR's voice echo in a way that seems both haunting and wanting amidst such vast atmospheric conditions. And there's a second, alternate remix from Jackson which feels nothing less than epic. Every element – from the sky scraping synths to the pumping beat – seems designed to fill the room with its flossy sound.

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