Beck - 'Guerolito' (Polydor) Released 23/01/06

They’re a strange brood remix albums. Sometimes they can be genuinely inspired and more rarely may even better than the original, while at others they can be lazily constructed with beats simply pasted over the superior version. Fortunately, the reworking of Beck’s all too overlooked ‘Guero’, the aptly titled ‘Guerolito’, is a jewel in the genre - mainly thanks to the fine choice of artists handpicked by the main man himself. Featuring facelifts by artists as diverse as Boards of Canada to Adrock of Beastie Boys fame to John King to Air, it’s a wonderfully off-kilter collection.

Islands’ sliced up and distorted interpretation of ‘Que Onda Guero’ is genuinely baffling, shifting to sanguine moments to mad vocal distortions, while Octet turn ‘Girl’ into a two headed beast of atmospherics and pulsating electronic static. Then Air provide an early album highlight – a synth driven, spaced out version of ‘Missing’ making for a vast all encompassing piece of music. Later Adrock turns ‘Black Tambourine’ into a minimal electro-tinged number and Mario C’s xylophone plonking mix of ‘Earthquake Weather’ is genuinely eerie. Then Scots Boards of Canada lift the bar with a trademark looping and whirring celestial noises. Top stuff indeed. That’s before we even get to the quite brilliant EL-P mix of Scarecrow.

If we were being hyper-critical, there is the odd trough on the album – Diplo’s staccato version of ‘Go It Alone’ is not a patch on the Beck’s track for one – but really that’s to be expected from a work so avant-garde and eclectic. Really there’s something for everyone here and ‘Guerolito’ makes for a blinding addition to the Beck arsenal.