The great thing about this remix is how it transforms cocky, douchebag L.A. scene cornball raps into this over-blissed burnout poignancy. Great remixes and edits of crap often work by removing the parts that don't work; instead Classixx (who have done high-profile & excellent remixes for Phoenix & Holy Ghost!) take elements that were just obnoxious in the original & manage to re-contextualize them so effectively that they become the best parts of the new version -- i.e. the hokey chorus vocals transformed into a gauzy druggedness, or the way the pop-rap goes from total trash to Crazytown-effective.

But the reason Classixx have finally 'clicked' for me is not in spite of their embrace of the trashy L.A. club-scene-kid aesthetic, but kinda because of it. I continue to be suspicious of this ‘scene’ as a whole, partly because of received wisdom, partly because of the ridiculous clothing, and mostly because much of the music credited to that world feels creatively bankrupt & emotionally like a lot of detached fronting. This can work in doses, but feels borderline nihilistic for an entire night out. Classixx embrace the slowed tempos that have turned the disco revival into more of a chugging balearic/sundrenched haze, the same spacious tastefulness, focus on craft, the epic sonic scope, and, most importantly, the emotional heft of peers & artists as diverse as Aeroplane, Mark E, Simian Mobile Disco's "I Believe." This is where they earn their hype & attention, even if functionally they aren't doing that much different than some of those artists. But by transmitting these values, these musical qualities, onto the trashier, Kitsune/Cobrasnake affiliated crowd, it feels like Classixx are also giving the style a big shot in the arm, all while differentiating themselves from the nudisco pack & enlarging their potential audience. This lack of 'seriousness' in collaborators & associations gives a genre that occasionally veers too close to record-spotters, collector-nerds & obscurantists (aka men, primarily) a needed shot of superficiality, an embrace of the facile, the artificial, the fleeting & the ephemeral. But it's all grounded with an emotional seriousness that sees meaning & feeling in the whirlwind youth world party, rather than dusty record sleeves, hidebound tradition & 'reference points.'