Lana Del Rey – Video Games (Balam Acab remix)
Lana Del Rey is a very good singer from America whose subject is love and persona is famous. Her most famous song is called Video Games, and it’s become quite the song to remix. Some songs find themselves in the enviable position of being the most remixed but with the case of Lana Del Rey, the phenomenon is doubly unfathomable. Video Games, to me, does not lend itself to reversioning. Unlike many classic remixed tunes like, I don’t know, The xx’s VCR or Cassie’s You And Me, Video Games has a locked-in quality – the production’s epic yet oddly flinty texture, the grim tattoo of the drum swell, the vocal’s emotion too brittle to be refixed.
Anyway, New York producer of some note Balam Acab, whose music I am – obviously – very fond of, has made a pretty decent stab at it, though the aesthetics don’t quite add up, with an effect closer to a mash-up than a remix, Lana Del Rey’s quite extraordinary vocal disconnected to the delicate, aqueous musical bed.
