New Music: Ladytron: "Soft Power (Loz & Brendan Long Mix)"
We can learn many things from 1982 Disney sci-fi flick Tron. One, Jeff Bridges knows a lot about video games. Two, Wendy Carlos > Journey > Supertramp. And three, there is a world inside computers where people are forced to play complex CGI games or else be destroyed by the Master Control Program. This Loz & Brendan remix of Ladytron's "Soft Power", part of the Soft Power Remixes EP released in conjunction with the Zune marketplace, has a similarly bleak retro-futurist vibe, drawing on the post-industrial minimalism of Detroit techno.
No surprise, then, that Liverpool-based Loz put the track on a mix alongside the likes of not just recent electronic faves Holden and Trentemoller but also Carl Craig, specifically the Detroit icon's revamp of Faze Action's "In the Trees". Ladytron e-mail list recipients may have already heard another take on "Soft Power", the "Vicarious Bliss Gutter Mix". Where that cut added big, frenetic beats to the The Witching Hour original's shimmery electronics, Loz & Brendan strip away the Lady and leave just the Tron.