Luxembourg’s Victor Ferreira, performing as Sun Glitters, recently remixed the fourth track off Dissolver (2014), a joint album by UK-based producer James Cooper (as Stumbleine) and vocalist Violet Skies. "Her Touch" took permanent residence in my head yesterday morning. It won't leave.
Dissolver itself was an interesting departure from Cooper’s largely instrumental, sparkling rosé of a debut, Spiderwebbed (2012), to say the least. The decision to attribute the album to its producer, first and foremost, was unconventional; Cooper carries most of Dissolver with crystal palettes and jewel-tone washes, but the collaboration ultimately falls flat as a Stumbleine record. The album remains grounded on Violet Skies’s vocals and would have fared better marketed as her solo debut.
Ferreira has done an excellent job of bringing out Cooper’s production and combining it with his own on his glitchier rework of “Her Touch”. A three-note ostinato looms ominously over the entire track, contributing to the sensory overload which extends the original cut by two well-deserved minutes. I suppose Violet Skies suffers the greatest loss here, having her vocals taken down half an octave or so, but I daresay – for this track, it works.
Ferreira will be on the move in Europe later this summer for a series of festivals including Act for Moderat (St. Petersburg, Russia), E-Lake (Echternach, Luxembourg), and Incubate (Tilburg, the Netherlands). I’m still taken with his remixed debut tape, Everything Could Be Remodelled and That’s Fine (2011), which first introduced me to Stockholm’s Christian Niva.
The three – Stumbleine, Sun Glitters, and NIVA -- constitute the most dangerously angelic of Bermuda Triangles. Listen to Niva’s interpretation of Sun Glitters’s “Too Much to Lose”; you’ll catch my drift.