Johnno Casson
Album: Window Dressing
Label: Rash
Tracks: 14
Website: http://www.johnnocasson.co.uk

I've never been a big fan of remixes. Back in the days of being a huge record buyer I always used to feel ripped off if the b-side on a new single was a remix or the extra tracks on an ep/12" were once again dub/flash/diddy megamixes of the original track, rather than proper non-album material.

That changed a bit when as a Blondie completist I was confronted by "Once More Into The Beach" a Blondie remix album. The completist inside me won out against the dislike of remixing. What I found with a whole album of remixes of songs that I was intimately familiar with was an album that shook up my ideas of how songs I thought I knew could have additional ideas brought out of them.

Since then I've encountered a number of remix albums and found they work best when the material is familiar to you. Case in point "Window Dressing", the companion volume to "Window Shopping" the homage to real life and the working class released by Johnno Casson to great acclaim last year, which features a full remix of the album and a couple of bonus tracks to boot.

A number of the remixers share Johnno's labels and have worked with or alongside him before and that aids the interacting creativity that sits across the project with arguably the best known collaborator being none other than mister Tom Robinson.

"Window Dressing" definitely works as a companion volume, but more importantly it also stands up in its own right. If you hadn't heard "Window Shopping" there is more than enough here to tell you what a good songwriter Johnno Casson is.

The album is available as a download from the 25th from www.rashrecords.co.uk

Neil King

For the record this is the first review written in the new office