In 2007, the electronic ambient/chill outfit from Australia All India Radio decided to branch out with a vocalist. Guitarist Martin Kennedy and his band mates reached out to Leona Gray to make Fall, an album that didn’t exactly meet universal praise but carried forth the band’s mission to stir their surrounding atmospherics nonetheless. Seven years later, Kennedy decides to give the album to us from another angle. Fall Remixes might be a remix album by name, but it doesn’t play out like any remix album you’ve heard. It really feels like Kennedy went back and retooled the studio air of seven years ago. The title track is kneaded to a moody sprawl, one that approaches a clipping point. And “The End Or Near” has so much reverb hooked up to Gray’s voice that her diphthongs are nowhere near the end of her phrases.
It’s as if the original album wandered into a cavern and is sending us distant signals of how to find it. If you don’t believe me, the band is selling a two-CD version of Fall Remixes with the second disc being the original album. In Martin Kennedy’s words, it’s more of a “re-imagining” than a remix. Just by standing on the surface it’s easy to see where he’s coming from.