- "Faking Jazz Together" is the second single from Connan Mockasin's debut album Forever Dolphin Love, released on Erol Alkan's Phantasy label. It's a weird, watery song, with shades of Atlas Sound, Gruff Rhys or a folkier Bear in Heaven; the guitars and acoustic drums move with a lilting, almost Caribbean shuffle, and the voice sounds like Tiny Tim taking alternating hits of nitrous and helium. It's all dreamy, diffuse and a little disorienting.
Count on Michael Mayer to find entirely new dimensions of pop hiding inside the contours of the original. He does away with Mockasin's tentative atmosphere, swapping out the cobwebbed guitars for sturdy synth bass and light-hearted xylophones, all set to a bold, major-key chord progression; Mockasin's vocals become newly assertive, even though they never rise above a falsetto whisper. It's in keeping with Supermayer's great remix of Rufus Wainwright's "Tiergarten," but less driving and a tad more whimsical. It feels, like much of Kompakt's best material, like a sleeper hit, the kind of thing you'll hear in three years and wonder, desperately, what it is.
The Horrors' Tom Furse also has a go at the song; his remix is a super-slow sort of space disco full of congas and keening synths, with strings and layered vocals giving it the faintest touch of the sacramental, like Lindstrom reworking Arvo Pärt.
Tracklist 01. Faking Jazz Together (Extended)
02. Faking Jazz Together (Michael Mayer Remix)
03. Faking Jazz Together (Tom Furse Remix)