From: Mini Disc Trading Post [url]
Date: September 2003

In 2002, the release of Terami Hirsh's To the Bone offered a refreshing, candid look at one musician's interior world. Terami, a Californian native, followed up her 1999 debut, All Girl Band, with a mature set of piano-driven tracks, wooing listeners and critics alike with intelligent songwriting and the mind-fuck production prowess of her producer, Kevin Benson.

Now, hot on its heels, comes From the Ash, a full-length reinterpretations project from Sydney-based artist Daniel Lloyd. Using raw materials from the To the Bone sessions, Lloyd has created a set of tracks both familiar and disarming - but it's best not to call them remixes.

"I think that 'remix', in the popular eye, has become a very narrowly-defined term of late," Lloyd says. "It seems to have become limited to something on a 12" for the dance floor, or something with slightly different elements that make it more radio friendly. Since my versions of Terami's songs fit into neither category, calling them remixes feels like I calling them something they're not. Even though, I suppose technically, they are remixes."

The cuts on From the Ash are also bold, inventive statements that put their parent album in a whole new (decidedly gothic) context. "Versioning - remixing, covering, reinterpreting - has always interested me," he adds; "how different elements can be brought to a song and create a completely different feel. In my eyes, it allows the versioning artist to create something of their own by using someone else's work as a springboard."

The emphasis on original music as that kind of springboard is, no doubt, responsible for the complex, divergent textures of Lloyd's reworked tracks - some have been a year in the making. "It all began around September 2002," he explains. "I was casting around for a project to work on for my music class at university - it was pretty much carte blanche for whatever you wanted to do. I didn't feel confident enough to write something myself at the time, and then Terami announced on her message boards that she was looking for people to remix the track 'Fire' from To the Bone. I asked if I could have a stab at it for my assignment - I was only required to submit one track - and so I did, and thus the two versions of 'Fire' you hear on From the Ash were born. Then, early this year, I took the next level music subject where you had to put together a whole musical package - artwork, music, everything. I'd enjoyed working on 'Fire', and people I'd played my versions to had enjoyed them, so I figured I'd try for the whole package and see how things worked out."

It's safe to say that From the Ash worked out rather well indeed. With a limited CD-R release (fully green-lighted by Hirsch and Benson) and a positive media buzz, Lloyd has already achieved what many musicians spend a lifetime working towards. His goal, however, was simple. "Hopefully," he says, "once people have listened to From the Ash, they'll re-listen to To the Bone and hear things that they hadn't heard before. If they enjoy it, that's great. If they don't, that's great too - as long as they can say they've heard it and made a decision from that. Whether they hear in the originals what I heard, or use the new versions as a springboard to hear their own interpretations is up to them, but I hope it opens people's minds to listening to more than just what is put down as the artist's finished version."

- Dan Stapleton, September 2003