Album: Various artists <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

Merry Mixmas - Christmas Classics Remixed, CAPITOL

Well, what a great idea this is: to take seasonal standards recorded by some of the great MOR stars of the past, and then to get a bunch of modern studio bores to remix them as if they were just dancefloor fodder. Having so clearly set out these two unrelated stools, I suppose it would be sheer bad manners for those involved on this album not to fall between them as clumsily as they do. I'm certain, for instance, that Eartha Kitt and Kay Starr were simply desperate to have tricksy new two-step rhythms imposed on their "Santa Baby" and "The Man With the Bag" respectively, while the ghosts of Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole and Dean Martin must rest reassured that EMI are safeguarding their artistic legacies with such taste and sensitivity. Dino comes off least badly, with the synth lines added to "Baby, It's Cold Outside" by Rhys Adams and Mark Rae being every bit as languid and louche as the crooner himself. More typical, however, is Ursula 1000's treatment of Julie London's "I'd Like You For Christmas", the cold impersonality of their new beat succeeding only in exaggerating the ice-maiden quality of London's voice to almost alien extremes.

DOWNLOAD THIS: "Baby, It's Cold Outside"