I’ve taken some liking to Sitti’s bossa nova music. So I was rightly intrigued when I spotted Sitti in the Mix: The Dense Modesto Remixes at Music One in Glorietta a couple of months ago. This is a compilation of electronic remixes of Sitti’s songs, most of which are themselves bossa nova covers of nice songs. This makes this album an original twice removed. Hehehe. I’m a bit partial to electronic and dance music (EDM) and Club MYX DJ Dense Modesto’s remix work got me quite curious.

I’m not an impulsive buyer, but I’ll admit that I bought the remix album on impulse. Listening to the CD in Music One, I was convinced enough to buy it. The album’s a pretty decent remixing of Sitti’s songs and it’s probably a good buy if you’re interested in locally-produced EDM.

Among the standout tracks on the compilation are “Didn’t Know I Was Looking For Love,” “Tattooed on my Mind,” and “Hey Look at the Sun.” EBTG’s songs are remix-friendly so it’s not surprising that “Didn’t Know” is a good track.

Dense is a pretty good remixer. I’m definitely not an expert on remixing, so take my words with liberal sprinklings of salt, but I can recognize that he has a promising talent. Bad remixing usually just lays a four-to-the-floor rhythm track on top of the song, but Dense uses various other effects and knows how to pace the songs. (I’m definitely gonna check out his next remix compilation, that of Nina’s songs.)

That said, I find the remix of the Sitti original “Para Sa Akin” a bit too cheesy, somewhat like the dance remixes you hear on masa radio stations (e.g., “For Life!!!”). I have yet to hear a nice house remix of a Tagalog song and I’m wondering if it’s simply an ingrained implicit association strongly correlating great EDM and foreign-language music.

But anyway, if you’re interested to hear samples, YouTube comes to the rescue! Or you can visit Dense’s music pages (Multiply or imeem) for more legal listening.