A carefully curated set of reworks filters last year’s Set My Heart on Fire Immediately through synth pop, techno, and other electronic lenses, giving Mike Hadreas’ grit a blast of glitter.
On last year’s Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, Perfume Genius assembled his most textural, captivating music to date. Contrasting the lo-fi dissonance of past records with blown-out power chords and synths, Mike Hadreas’ fifth LP addressed themes of isolation and corporeal anxiety with an agile, heart-wrenching touch. Less than a year later comes the first full-length Perfume Genius remix album, a carefully curated set that filters Set My Heart on Fire Immediately through synth pop, techno, and other electronic lenses, giving his grit a blast of glitter.
The high-speed reworks on IMMEDIATELY Remixes are the most immediately gratifying. Planningtorock dresses up “Jason” with ping-ponging synths and breakbeats, plunging Hadreas directly into a late-night dancefloor and morphing the song’s awkward one-night stand into something altogether more feverishly desperate. For the sparse “Moonbend,” Hadreas enlists Nídia, who stacks it with jittery, dynamic drum patterns and loops Hadreas’ mournful backing vocals. The Portuguese producer maintains the song’s spectral luster but then amplifies it with heart-racing energy; it’s easily one of the album’s most daring rearrangements. Danny L Harle’s “Harlecore” version of “Just a Touch,” meanwhile, refracts it through a convex mirror: Hadreas’ voice is pitched up to a whine, while a swarm of trance synths and pummeling drums fuse to form the album’s most euphoric moment.
When the remixes gesture toward more straightforward pop, things get a little shakier. Westerman adds muted, spacious details to “Nothing at All,” one of the original album’s most gutting tracks, including chirping cicadas, flutes and horns, and handclaps; the combined effect washes out the song in drab colors. Tokyo-based producer Initial Talk takes the opposite tack, setting Hadreas against swathes of bright, chintzy synths. It’s a fun pastiche (and suggests that Hadreas’ voice is malleable enough to cosplay any era’s sound), but it also veers dangerously close to hackneyed “’80s remix” YouTube territory.
The album’s stranger moments fare better. Jenny Hval’s experimental spin on “Leave” distends the original synth line and layers on Hadreas’ reverbed vocals until her own voice suddenly enters, speaking about using reverb as a way of traveling through space. It’s a meta moment that adds depth to the project, carving out a sense of genuine humanity in touch with Hadreas. Other off-kilter producers succeed by tapping into a similarly meandering vein: Katie Dey blends a metronomic beat and Hadreas’ spliced and delayed voice on “Borrowed Light,” uplifting it with airy, fine-tuned delicacy, and the twangy guitar and arcing melodies from “One More Try” become grainy textures for UK producer Actress, who ratchets up the song’s wistful romance tenfold.
That IMMEDIATELY Remixes’ varying reworks interweave so well is a testament to Hadreas’ distinctive voice and songwriting. Following the same tracklisting as the original, the album flows as through a dreamlike alternate vision. The set also nicely complements the sense of freedom Hadreas has described performing modern dance while writing Set My Heart on Fire Immediately—you can easily picture him writhing and twisting in a group performance to the album’s club-oriented moments. No matter the stage dressing, it’s hard to lose sight of Hadreas’ particularly captivating form of surrender.
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