k.d. lang: makeover | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- k.d. lang has gathered up an eclectic collection of reworks, taking in well known tracks off her albums from the decade that kept the centuries (and millennia) apart – the 1990s. Starting in 1992 with Ingénue, then the soundtrack album of 1993's Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, the massive pop hit All You Can Eat from 1995, Drag 1997 and ending the decade with 2000’s Invincible Summer.

Some of these tracks would be familiar to those who partied during the '90s or ruthlessly collected remixes of their favourite k.d.singles (#NoJudgementHere), though lang has suggested she’s gathered these particular remixes together to document a time before social media, smart phones and apps: a time when word of mouth spread the buzz of what DJ was killing it (or not), who had taken what unlikely track or artist and given it the club treatment. It was also a time before the tensions of the post 9/11 world, fake news and the rabid right wing conspiracy nutjobs. So, in a word or four, Makeover is a nostalgia trip.

That nostalgia is fuelled by bringing back some of the big producer and remixer names of the day – Junior Vazquez, Love To Infinity and Tony Maserati – and the once familiar production additions to make a massive club hit in the 90s are all there – bright keyboard chords to build on the house bass beats, the winding of the vocals around the developing patterns and the payoff as the track explodes into a joyful burst of sound.

The album opens with a bit of a slow burner, Lifted By Love in the Club Xanax mix (lang and her producer Ben Grosse’s moonlighting moniker). It's almost like a hypnotist gently soothing their client to go into a deep trance and walk back through their memories, it showcases just how pure and evocative lang’s voice is (described by people like Elton John as the best female singer around). Just Keep Me Moving in the Movin mix transforms a country-cowpunk soundtrack song into a very sensuous throbbing house track without sacrificing lang’s original, dreamy vocals.

To be fair, being a compilation of tracks and producers from two to three decades ago, this won’t be an even ride. Miss Chatelaine’s quirky St. Tropez mix is… quirky. All cheesy Latin rhumba, with just more than a hint of Barry Manilow’s Lola at the Copacabana. The two mixes of Sexuality are quiet a study in contrasts. Maserati’s is straighter down the line, but DJ Krush weaves a bit of old school hip-hop trickery and makes for a far more interesting mix.

The two Summerfling remixes give the album a nice bookending of the last third of the recording – the Ananda’s Sweet Bird of Summer Extended Mix is very Ibiza-ready and the final track of the whole outing, the Wamdue’s Making Me High Dub is the sort of stuff DJs loved to mix into other tracks with the track ending by deconstructing itself – and it sounds like it would be perfect for the last mix of a night on the dance floor. Maybe it’s that nostalgia kicking in again?

Overall it’s a curious but worthwhile collection, exquisitely mixed, remastered and packaged (complete with previously unseen “glam” shots of lang on the cover).it’s a historical record of what lang was up to in the her heyday of major international recognition and success. Like all nostalgia, good for a visit and remembering wistfully how things were and will never be that way again.

- Blair Martin.