Kraftwerk has a new album and single out, called “Tour De France Soundtracks” and “Tour De France 2003” respectively.
Now, the songs actually called “Tour De France” sound nothing like the 1982 original. The lyrics are differnet, the music is different…and yet three reputable reviews I’ve read classify the new version as a “remix/remake.”
Which leads me to question just what a remix is these days. When Aphex Twin “remixed” NIN it seemed a bit clearer, since he basically took a track, made it into a snare drum sound, and wrote a whole new song around it – but had the good sense to give it a different name. With so many songs being wholly rebuilt by a remixer – when does it stop being a derivative work of the original? When does it become a track of its own?
Something to devote some brain cycles to.