Experimental songwriter and electronic folk innovator Me Lost Me announces a new collaborative Remix EP, with varied and bold reworkings of songs from October 2021’s ‘The Circle Dance’ EP by Mariam Rezaei, Jennifer Walton, AJA and Jen Mac.

‘The Circle Dance’ EP was widely praised as her “most textural and sonically adventurous music to date” (NARC Magazine) and this adventure has been furthered by a group of new collaborators six months later, who have completely transformed these songs for this release. Me Lost Me, aka Newcastle-based Jayne Dent, says of the process “I invited these artists because I love their work, and I was keen to get people involved who would have a playful approach and create exciting and unexpected results. I invited them to choose which songs to work with, to respond freely and without restrictions of style, energy or sound.”
What results is a collection of distinctive tracks that take the listener on a journey, showcasing atmospheric and innovative electronic music production that defies genre and expectations.

The EP opens with ‘Sing to the Sun’, remixed by folk guitarist turned-electronic music producer Jen Mac, in a light and shimmering burst of energy. With a background in traditional music much like Me Lost Me’s own, this pairing of artists is a natural one. A key feature of Jen Mac’s production style is the manipulation of samples to create textures, and the voice has been the focus of this treatment in this track, with the melodies caught up in a torrent of undulating and stuttering synths and drums. Faye MacCalman’s soaring clarinet sits unphased atop the surface of the track, a calm counter to the bouncing and lively undercurrent of this energetic and compelling opening track.

Noise artist AJA is renowned for her captivating and confrontational performances in the electronic music underground, and the sonic density of her work which cuts through a dancefloor with a scything ability. She took on the title track ‘The Circle Dance’, drawn to it’s “haunting, lingering double bass”, keen to make this the centerpiece of the remix. Working as subconsciously as possible, she layered, sampled and processed the double bass parts, creating an organic structure that rings with hard and heavy metallic tones. It has a potent atmosphere. While the original holds a foreboding air of folk horror dissonance, AJA’s rework, a “direct emotional response” conjures a dark industrial space or a ship creaking in a storm, with tense, heartbeat-like drums emerging as though a bodily reaction to entering this strange place.

First sharing a live bill in 2018, Me Lost Me and Jennifer Walton have a long standing appreciation and understanding of each other's work. This comes across when Walton describes her remix of ‘Binoculars’, saying that she wanted to “honour Jayne’s vision and aesthetics” while weaving in her “own touch”. She does this by bringing her club energy and flair for arrangement to the remix, showcasing her fresh take on electronic music that sees her as an established member of the UK’s new underground post-electronica movement. The track begins with spacious swells bubbling under vocals and clarinet, steadily building into a euphoric and hypnotic track inspired by the “trance-like elements” of the vocals. The electronics ring with clarity and the sounds are designed with surgical precision, exploring warped tropes of 90’s trance, leading Walton to describe her remix as a “track for crying on the dance (bedroom) floor”.

Award winning composer, turntablist and performer Mariam Rezaei closes the EP with her reworking of ‘Sing to the Sun’, the lead single from the original EP which both begins and ends this collection of remixes. In the hands of Rezaei, however, the track receives a completely different treatment, a demonstration of the varied compositional approaches of the artists involved in this release. Taking only the vocals, Rezaei adds no parts; instead carving out the track by panning, pitch shifting and time stretching the samples. Backing vocals surface and intertwine, creating moments of warmth and jarring tension, while the main melody slowly unravels and the core sound is transformed from voice into dense crackling static. As the accompanying wash of voices descend into this complete distortion, and with no trace of the lyrics remaining, we are fully taken over by its shifting, disorientating noise. Throughout this final track, Rezaei expertly disintegrates all that has come before, closing the EP by breaking it down, leaving us ready to begin again with a clean slate.