Cut Face: Body Hook takes Upgrade and removes the restraint

Cut Face handed Upgrade to Body Hook and he took the brakes off. The remix, out now, is darker and heavier than the April single, and the first thing it loses is the restraint.

Cut Face are an Anglo-French duo: Body Hook, a French producer previously championed by Four Tet, Special Request and Annie Mac, and Tacita Grace, a classically trained British vocalist. Their debut EP, You'll Never Get The Same Moment Twice, came out in May. This is the first release since.

It lands five days before their first ever UK live show, supporting 1-800 GIRLS at London's Village Underground on 30 September. The invitation came from 1-800 GIRLS directly. Body Hook calls his own work on the track 'a slightly schizophrenic exercise', and the record backs him up.

The track is three minutes and five seconds of garage, jungle, darkwave and punk in the same frame. It keeps the original's subject, numbing out through drugs and partying, and pushes it into heavier, stranger territory: brutal and atmospheric at once, and it never smooths anything over.

It is for anyone who played the April version and wanted it harder, and for listeners who arrived through Body Hook's production. A Tim Reaper remix from the EP is still to come, so the pair are not finished handing their own material over.

What it does not do is develop: one idea, held, then gone. Whether that is discipline or a shortage of material, the next remix gets to answer.

3.5. Loud and single-minded, and a strong case that Cut Face's songs survive being taken apart. Nobody involved is precious about the original.

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