… and Guerolito is exactly that. But released in its own so called right. Thankfully, it’s a relatively cheap thrill, and with sixteen songs, it’s hardly shortchanging anyone. But it’s utterly superfluous. Presenting remixes of every track from the “Guero” album in order, it ditches the received knowledge (and potential) of the remix work, presenting instead, just a set of slightly different versions.

The malady of modern remixing is presented clearly here : the tendancy to shoehorn every song, every quirk and style into a generic box of noises, beats, and BPM’s, “Guerolito” slaughters the reputation of Beck as being in any way eclectic : they all sound the same. Unless, like The Shamen's longforgotten “Progeny” remix, it’s an exercise in postmodern boredom and repetition, “Guerolito” is a bit of a bore.

The potential of the remix is to change the song from a caterpillar to a butterfly. Too often, it goes the other way. Whereas it could’ve been a wonderful experiement, an attempt to extract every idea and nugget of information, extrapolate it, and make the song everythinhg it could’ve been, most of the songs stay at the same rhythm, the same style, roughly the same length.

Think of the power of the remix : Butch Vig making “Never Gonna Get It” into some kind of rampaging, sleazy rock sex monster instead of a fairly bland R’n’B lustfest. Of EBTG’s “Missing” moving from a morose ballad into a celebration of the power of music to set you free.

Nope. None of that. Here you get a bunch of songs that seem almost the same as the originals. Only Air’s remix of “Heaven Hammer” (sounding like Gary Numan), and Boards of Canada’s take on “Broken Drum”, makes any stylistic change to the original beyond providing a cheap lick of new paint, same colour as the old.

Guerolito neither liberates the old stuff, or offers anything new to it. The old cliches is that you can’t polish a turd - and if anything, the more examination of the original there is, it exposes “Guero” for the work of a great artist who appears to have stumbled into offering a generic product of indistinct melody and nonsensical lyrics. Some could say that that’s always been Beck’s Unique Selling Point, but with words that arrive like psuedo-gibberish and music that could sedate, “Guerolito” is a largely pointless exercise without much charm and offers even less artistically. Still, good thing it’s cheap. You get what you pay for.

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