New Beatles Mash Up

Kid Various has recently bought the new Beatles album Love.

The piece, which is actually classified as a new Beatles album, is a pastiche of works by the Fab Four that were remixed by original producer Sir George Martin and his son Giles to serve as the focus for a new Cirque du Soleil show in Vegas.

It's essentially a Beatles club mix. With the exception of some string arrangements for "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," the Martins used only material from the original master tapes. It's a solid effort, but really only of interest to hard core Beatles fans who would appreciate the subtleties of the differences from the original works and the sometimes unexpected twists and turns.

The one exception is this truly inspired mash up of "Tomorrow Never Knows" from Revolver and "Within You Without You" from Sgt. Pepper.



Both works have always been faves of Kid Various, who's a big fan of The Beatles' more psychedelic stuff. And in this measure, both songs have always delivered. But the decision to lift Ringo's hypnotic drum line and Paul's bass from "Tomorrow Never Knows" and lay them under the vocals and sitar from "Within You Without You" is a stroke of genius by the Martins. The two works complement each other perfectly. Sprinkle in some extra motifs from "Tomorrow" and you have a truly unique interpretation of The Beatles' original ideas.

Good stuff! (and the remix of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" is actually pretty good too...)

UPDATE: Reader Douglas Grant points us to another remix of "Tomorrow Never Knows" he created as part of a public radio 40th anniversary tribute for the release of Revolver. (Jesus! Revolver is 40 years old!)

It's really good. It interweaves elements from the rest of the album with the all important drum track. One of the commentators from the radio show noted something very true. The core of "Tomorrow Never Knows" is, of course, Ringo's hypnotic and almost machine-precision drum line. It was trance, before there was trance!