Coochy Coo the X-Men Remixes 12"

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For pop music, the gothic has proved both an enduring source of imagery and, more importantly, a repository of moods unattainable without reference to that sense, articulated so cogently by H.P. Lovecraft, that "human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos at large". In dance music, it was largely the advent of electronics which enabled producers to begin to access the gothic stance: from Jamie Principle's shell-shocked 'Baby Wants to Ride', which posits both love and God as fictive elements in "a fascist dream", to Dom & Roland's scouringly bleak future-world schematics, its materialist, anti-soul aesthetic has been a frequent visitor to clubland ever since. X-men's 2-step remixes of 'Coochy Coo', originally a rather mundane four-to-the-floor stomper which would not sound out of place on daytime Radio 1, reside squarely in this tradition. Both their 'Club Mix' and their 'Dancefloor Dub' revolve around a slithery, sub-centric bassline pinioned by an ominous arpeggiated synth refrain, seemingly lifted directly from one of John Carpenter's DIY horror soundtracks. However, it is the vocals which really trip one up: drenched in breathy atmospherics, they slip and slide, flicker and blur with an expressiveness one does not really expect from UK garage, sounding at times more akin to Swans' Jarboe or Dead Can Dance's Lisa Gerrard than the usual mellifluous R&B divas. In speaking so powerfully of an individual human subject, they recall Marx's assertion that human emancipation begins with a rejection of religion's doctrine of ineffable spirit - with the understanding that, to quote Lovecraft again, "matter, it appears, really is exactly what 'spirit' was always supposed to be."