Himera - The Remix Album (2024)

 

Bubblegum Bass / Hyperpop / Trance

RIYL: Hannah Diamond, Life Sim, EASYFUN

★★★★

There's plenty of artists who put out remix albums of other likeminded musicians remixing their material, though some of these (e.g. HEALTH and Korallreven) lend themselves more toward external remixing than others. The artists that do the opposite, though, by collecting their own remixes of other performers' music on a single album are few and far between, perhaps due to licensing difficulties or what have you. This is a shame, especially because some electronic musicians excel in the remix format (Delorean and Deakin of Animal Collective, to name a few) and a proper record compiling their remixes could potentially even outshine their discographies of original work, but alas us completionist fanatics are forced to compile our own collections as unofficial playlists instead.

Himera's latest release, their first since their criminally overlooked debut album in 2022, bucks the trend with a massive set of 21 impeccably shiny remixes that showcase their knack for crafting rubbery EDM that soars to great arpeggiated heights the likes of which early PC Music and hyperpop enthusiasts never got quite enough of before the genre turned pop-punk. Proudly displaying its extremely well-curated set of influences, The Remix Album energetically bounces between massive reworks of key tracks from the early progenitors of the genre as well as the purist pop that inspired them: beginning with a Himera remix of Himera that mashes together three of their best tracks, the rest of the set covers all the ground between EASYFUN, Charli xcx, Carly Rae Jepsen, Pink Pantheress, Planet 1999, Life Sim, and Hannah Diamond.

The compositions rarely adhere to the constructs of the original source material, instead using vocal snippets or synth passages as found samples or bases from which to interpolate in a completely different direction, which serve to claim them as Himera's own pieces instead of just a glimpse into their music library. And for those of us who preferred the more avant- side of hyperpop in its early days to the watered-down cloud rap it's become in recent years, the set serves as an excellent showcase to remind of what made the movement so thrilling in the first place.