Live Review: LISTEN: Sleigh Bells ’Young Legends' (Jam City Mix)

Jam City’s remix of the Sleigh Bells single 'Young Legends' takes techno-friendly pop and shaves it until it resembles neither techno nor dance nor punk.

I’ve never found SLEIGH BELLS easy to pigeonhole, and that’s probably the point. Theirs is a sound that builds on juxtaposition: creamy teen dream vocals versus angsty pseudo-rap; sugary pop hooks gnawed to the bone by fuzzed-out guitar crunch.

It makes for a heady brew and a busy, crowded soundscape. But it’s the band’s simpler moments that are their most radiant: when they unplug the pedals and mop up the grime, stepping out from behind the wall-of-noise and crafting sparser, airier songs like the brilliant ‘Rill Rill’ and, more recently, ‘Young Legends’.

This remix takes the latter and strips it back further, leaving little more than the bones of the original, a fade-in wind howling through them. Alexis Krauss croons over the barest of effects, a life-support machine beeps, and the track reaches the height of its aggression with the insistent but subdued beating of an 808 snare.

It’s unburdened, uncluttered, and deliciously understated—more chill-step than noise pop, more JAMES BLAKE than DEATH FROM ABOVE 1979. And therein lies the audacity and originality of JAM CITY’s remix: taking a techno-friendly pop song, by a band that could easily be generalised under something like ‘dance punk’, and shaving it until it resembles neither techno nor dance nor punk.