Yoko Ono turned 74 last week, yet she’s just so cool that it really doesn’t matter.Her reputation is dubious - pop traitor? Tortured genius? Both? It all adds to her bubble of mystique, which this album does little to burst, drawing you in to her work, but despite her raw, hippy emotion, where the risk is that she sounds more like your grandma than a pop star – “remember that you are loved, I love you!” – it’s impossible to get too close.

Her image, her voice and her ideas distance her from all categories and contexts, and that is why her age doesn’t matter. Her thoughts are still fresh. For such an artist then, and perhaps for very few others, a remix album which so frequently plucks her voice from the original recordings and sets it against new backgorunds works exceptionally well, for there is little risk of excessive intrusion on the part of producers when the music is often little more than a vehicle for “such a cool chick, baby”.And on that she’s not far wrong.

Whilst in every song on this album the focus is on her fantastic breathless and wavering voice, it is never quite possible to get away from the incoherence that backs her.The quality of the offerings varies immensely, from the awesome interpretation of “Walking on Thin Ice” with Spiritualised’s Jason Pierce of which pits crashing guitars reeking of the no-wave scene, so flushed with the New York avant garde that characterises Yoko Ono’s work, against the instrumentation of Joy Division’s “Atmosphere”. But, the very next track with Anthony (of Anthony and the Johnsons) tries too hard to make something of his backing track which sounds more like Chariots of Fire than the spacey atmospheres Yoko dreams of.

There are other great songs, such as Cat Power’s emotionally rich duet, but this is compromised by the film trailer dross that is Shitake Monkey’s effort. The acoustic elements work best in bringing out Yoko’s voice and thoughts, like the ‘Death of Samantha’, and the electronic sections have their moments, but as with Hank Shocklee’s ‘Witch Shocktronica’ the good bits are often gone sooner than it is possible to appreciate them. This album works fantastically well as a way into Yoko’s world, but I would guess not if it is approached by fans of her collaborators instead. Her reputation as being more than a touch mad leads too many here to try just a bit too hard to be up to the challenge.

Three Stars

Tom Hamilton

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