Release Date: January 20th, 2009

The music of My Brightest Diamond lends itself well to remixes. Shara Worden’s exquisite voice provides the perfect lead (or backing track) for any sort of deconstructing or restructuring of her original music.  My Brightest Diamond’s debut Bring Me the Workhorse (2006) was given the remix treatment in the form of a remix compilation entitled Tear It Down (2007).  This collection is evidence to the strength of her compositions and voice, as remixed by such artists as Murcof, Alias, Lusine, Golden Chains among others.  While Asthmatic Kitty and My Brightest Diamond had no regrets about the Tear It Down project, when the time came to talk remixes for A Thousand Shark’s Teeth, they both realized a need for a more cohesive and conceptual project. They brought on four remixers (Alfred Brown, DM Stith, Son Lux and Roberto Carlos Lange (Epstein, Savath and Savalas, ROM)) and comissioned them to each create a separate EP of remixed material. The second of these EPs is by Son Lux.

Son Lux is Ryan Lott. He lived for six years in Cleveland, Ohio and earned a reputation as a versatile and zealous collaborator. Equally at ease in the creative company of choreographers, classical musicians, and break dancers, Lott cut his teeth spear-heading multi-disciplinary “performance parties,” composing music for dance companies throughout the US, and collaborating with bands across many genres. In the cracks of time and energy between all his collaborations, “Son Lux” was born out of an urge to finally set about making an album. It began as an experiment and a personal creative challenge. What Lott, as Son Lux, wove together over 4 years in his attic studio is the album many critics are calling one of the best records of 2008. At War With Walls and Mazes is an impressive debut which earned Son Lux the title of Best New Artist by NPR’s All Songs Considered as well as rave reviews from ARTFORUM, Pitchfork, Paste and XLR8R.

After Asthmatic Kitty asked Lott to remix Thousand Shark’s Teeth, the second full-length from My Brightest Diamond, Son Lux restrained himself from hearing any of the songs he remixed until after he was completely finished working, keeping with his custom. “This enables me to glimpse the soul of the song in its parts, rather than its whole,” Son Lux says. He then takes the pieces of bone and tissue from the session files and mends them together to create a new thing, stitching in his own pieces and parts, unbiased by an “end result” or preconceived form. The outcome is indeed a collection of new lifeforms, whose souls have withstood Son Lux’s process, reincarnated into new living things.

Fortunately for Son Lux, his specimens had good karma. This graceful Dr. Frankenstein approach to the My Brightest Diamond material has created four very distinct remixes, ranging from the old-school electro mashed with New Orleans horn funk treatment of “Apples,” elegiac ambient strings overtop minimalist post-rock drumming on “The Diamond,” break driven cutup rocker of the anthem “Inside A Boy,” to the lowrider chamber piano chopped “To Pluto’s Moon.”