Katie Dey: Urdata | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- It’s difficult to imagine someone as introverted as Katie Dey asking people to do a whole album of remixes for her. The avant-pop producer, wracked by shyness and neurological pain, has made a habit of being anonymous, hiding herself from the public eye. It’s analogous to the way she uses (and deliberately misuses) pitch-shifting software to hide her vocals in a cloud of helium and a storm of broken glass. Still, in the year where everyone was introverted Katie Dey was more in the public eye than ever before: releasing multiple records, collaborating with Devi McCallion, reducing those signature levels of production camouflage to reveal a bit more of her actual self and -on the internet at least, the realm where she’s most at home- quite candidly telling people what she's about.

Her new record, UrData, an unusually comprehensive collection of remixes, tackles every single track from Dey’s 2020 album, MyData. It taps the kind of like-minded talent you would expect for the task. There’s avant-garde, genre-hopping and multidisciplinary artists from Australia like Lonelyspeck and abroad, including some veterans, Baths for instance. Internet heroes like the members of Black Dresses or 100 gecs and PC Music folks such as Danny L Harle are here too.

You’d imagine these are the sort of people Katie Dey would rub shoulders with, except as someone who doesn’t really gig or tour, I’m not even sure how she would know a lot of them. Perhaps it’s more help from Devi McCallion, who has encouraged and championed, even badgered Dey into getting out there and getting the credit her music deserves. Perhaps it’s the influence of Run For Cover, the label Dey has now released quite a few records with, or perhaps Dey’s internet connections run deeper than I had suspected.

The beginning of the record meets Katie more on her own terms, preserving much of the existing song structure and the very personal lyricism. Lonelyspeck’s rework of Darkness pulls out the synth strings and replaces them with a grungy guitar - an excellent choice, really bringing out the ‘90’s alt-pop that is latent in so much of Dey’s work. Where MyData was Katie’s most honest-to-goodness attempt at genuine pop to date, much of UrData leans back towards the fiercer, fuzzier, industrial sounds that are the comfort-zone for most of the artists here. Take Ada Rook’s thickly textured and glitched out version of Dancing. Some of it I didn’t really see coming, like Nondi_’s very handcrafted footwork collage created from the fragments of Happiness.

In the ‘90s remix albums were, more often than not, a terrible excuse to just paste a dance beat on to any old thing and cash in. Remix records tend to be much more considered and respectful of their source material these days, but -again it kind of caught me by surprise- some of the best stuff here blitzes the original songs into their basic ingredients and rebuilds them as dance. Little known LA producer Pastel grows the Kate Bush-esque two minutes of Words into a layered, hazy and deeply enjoyable seven minutes of dancefloor fodder, with a big finish. Baths’ subtle and tasteful take on Loving is a quiet groover too and one that warms the soul.

The closing trio of cuts is a blinder: Devi McCallion crashing about in her typically bombastic way, followed by euphoric drum’n’bass from default genders, but the finish is special indeed: Tomberlin teases out the essence of album closer, Data, and performs it as a lo-fi folk cover that’s movingly beautiful. You can find a nice remix that Katie Dey did of Tomberlin’s hours, up on Bandcamp and, with it, a very sweet testimonial that goes some way to explaining how Dey knows Tomberlin and probably a lot of people here:

katie is truly a magic music maker. the first time i heard her music i was blown away. there wasn’t really much about her online, but somehow we connected online (probably twitter) and hit it off. i was just starting to make my own music as she was putting her stuff out and it is sweet to see how much brilliant work she’s put out just in the last few years already. i always bring her up to people when they ask what i’m listening to because i am always listening to her and not enough people know about her. i really do think she is doing something that only she can do and that is magic to me. please enjoy this remix that gives me sad gay cowboy vibes but you’re dancing it out etc. katie dey forever and ever amen.

Amen indeed. The last couple of years have made the internet feel like a toxic swamp and it’s easy to forget the medium’s old utopian promise, to be a great connector for humanity. It’s especially good then to see that Katie Dey, who has so much trouble with the physical world, is harnessing that potential and, in a time where we all feel so far apart, really coming together.

- Chris Cobcroft.
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