Karsh Kale

Just in case you passed on last year's Realize, Redesign pulls the needle back and drops it down with a pressure that's both dark and electric. Vocal srutis undergo mad fragmentation and breakbeats toughen up Kale's self-styled tabla grooves. There's Ming and FS taking the romantic musings of "Saajana" into drum & bass overdrive and a killer 303 breakdown, while Kale performs a similar assault on the equally frenetic "Destroy The Icon," as does DJ Spooky with his electro-rock mash-up of "One Step Beyond." But not everything here is so aggressive. The "Brooklyn Mix" of "Deepest Blue" holds it down with an old school groove as male-female voices intertwine in Hindi. The "Mighty Junn Summer of XAI Mix" of "Light Up the Love" jostles deep funk, jungle-ist rattle, hyper-electro breaks and folk guitar strums while the triad of vocals shine through psychedelic filters. The songs are clearly not the same but Kale and his remixers find a tight balance of elements on every track, except for the three versions of his masterpiece "Home." Over-treated with effects and breaks, the mixes dilute the poetry of the original's lyrics, which is unfortunate given that its narrative of pending apocalypse and naked desire speaks so powerfully in these war looming times. The surreal off-tunings and added whispers on Mukul's "Acid Lullaby" mix of the track, however, manages to bring out some of these anxieties in their own subtle sonic way.