Search - Nina Simone :: Remixed & Reimagined

A remix album that truely does reimagine

William R. Nicholas | Mahwah, NJ USA | 05/13/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"i always had very conflicting feelings about Nina Simone. Her ability to give such waight to the waighty issue of her day, raceism, is admerable, and she tackled it with complete courage and honesty, long before most other artists, white or black did.



Yet, when i listen to her, I really have to prepare myself, because this is going to be one HEAVY experiance: listen to Pirate Jenny or Two sisters, or for that matter, most of her work, and it is an emotional, frightening, almost menacing experiance.`You get the feeling she is pissed enough to reach through the speaker and kill you. This is not a critcism, because the music is so genuine, and the racial gripes very well founded in those days. Yet, even when she is singing a love ballad, that vibrato tinged voice sounds deadly serious.



All of which is what makes this album so great. It focuses on her later work, which is more oriented towards rock and pop. The remixes of, say "what I got" or "to love sombody" remind you of how good a singer she was, even outside the heviness of her era, and outside of the fact that her voice is defiantely an aquired taste.



but for me, the selling point has to be "Funkier Than a Misqito's Tweeter" The riff and her approach to the material almost make this a funky piece of hard rock, and the mix is just incredible, taking the song through all kinds of permutations--drums, tablas, studio chatter--and it just KICKS/ Plus, Nina's vindictive, caustic women scorned attitude on this is FUNNY-even she seems to love the humor of it--is a refreshing side of her i have never heard before. It is as if a firebrand preacher is comming down from the alter, and the two of you are sharing scotch, dirty jokes, and ciggarettes. i wish she did more of this.









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