Last year, Eamon The Destroyer released his second longplayer We’ll Be Piranhas, an excellent exercise in experimental pop music that managed to marry catchy melodies with an avantgarde esprit. The Scottish artist used the time between his two albums to release an hour-long digital album of reimagined versions of songs from the debut. This time, Eamon was less ambitious and decided that it would be enough to release five of the songs from the second album as alternate takes under the name Alternate Piranhas. They are not really remixes, but rather the same songs with occasional different instruments. The idea was to make the music sound more direct, more chaotic and generally more distorted.

This can best be heard on the first two songs A Pewter Wolf and Rope, both of which were released as singles before the launch of the second album. Comparing all five songs side by side, it is obvious that there are changes, but also that they maintain the spirit of the original versions.

All in all, this is a nice addition to the catalogue of Eamon The Destroyer’s music, but one wonders if an entire new version of We’ll Be Piranhas wouldn’t have been more intriguing. The way it is, we only get half of that album in somewhat noisier instrumentation. Alternate Piranhas is pleasant enough, but not necessarily a must-have acquisition.

5 songs

23:51 minutes

***** **

Genre: experimental pop

Label: Bearsuit

Artist pages:
Facebook