Rating: NNNN
Here are two discs, one containing the best work from the archive of Impulsive! Records, the leading label in the 60s for experimental and political jazz, whose star was John Coltrane. The second is a full-length remix take on the originals by a classy roster of production innovators like RZA, Prefuse 73, Chief Xcel and Kid Koala. While the remixers surely imbue the songs with freshness (and marketability), the brilliant tunes by Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Yusef Lateef and Chico Hamilton are still so mind-blowing in their original forms that most of the new renderings seem a bit perfunctory – even Fatboy Slim-ishly cheap, by comparison.
