What do Britney Spears and Mercury Rev have in common?

It's been tough blogging recently. I'm supervising the renovation of an apartment (supervising, as in 'not doing any of the actual physical work') and have got quite a bit of proper paid work on too, which is good, but leaves less time for the more pleasurable things in life.

And it's been an age since there been any decent music on the blog too. Time to remedy that.

I've been a fan of James Holden ever since his extraordinary and brilliant mix compilation At The Controls (available here for the ridiculous price of £4.29). His label Border Community 'blurs the boundary between the bedroom and the dancefloor', and frankly I've seen quite few people do things on the dancefloor that would be best confined to the bedroom. But anyway...

I recently came across some unreleased remixes that he did for Britney Spears. The track Breathe On Me was not released as a single and James' remixes never got released... until he put high-quality mp3s on his site for a while. There was a mix and a dub, and of course I couldn't resiste tinkering with them, so Britney got the Fist treatment: I put a bit of the dub before the main mix, the whole thing now clocks in at 12'39" and Lord I love it to bits. Download my version here.

Mr. Holden doesn't actually do many remixes, but it seems his next one is for Mercury Rev. Their next spacey album is due out 29th September, and the track Senses On Fire has been remixed both by Holden and Fujiya & Myagi (who?). The mixes are only being streamed on the official site for the moment, but you can here a pretty good quality rip here.

Holden's mix is nearly ten minutes long, and pulses along quite nicely, although I challenge anyone to actually dance to it. By the way the lyrics to the original are "Senses are on fire (repeated 8 times), My senses are on fire (x2), Ready or not here I come, Senses are on fire (repeated 8 times)." What are they on?

Download the Britney Fist Fusion here, and Mercury Rev here.