Afropop Worldwide

When in doubt, drop the remix. At this point, it's a standard approach towards extending a group's material, teasing fans, and making new connections. It's also, in the right hands, a recipe for musical excellence. Skip and Die are an electronic duo comprised of  South African visual artist/vocalist Catarina Aimée Dahms and dutch producer Jori Collignon. After releasing their debut album "Riots in the Jungle" on Crammed Discs last year, they've dropped the first single from their remix album "Riots Remixed," due to be released on September 2nd. Luckily? It's another home run from Frickstailers, who have proven themselves again and again to have mastered a version of cumbia that is both woozily electronic and dancefloor rocking bass heavy. Their remix of "La Cumbia Dictadura" evens out the over-obvious dubstep drops of the original, casing the track in a coat of menacing digital murk and throwing echoed shards of vocals back and forth across the low-end abyss. An extended coda pulls a taffy-stretched synth line to the forefront for a brief melodic respite before the mechanical pulse returns and the track almost brutally cuts. If this is an indication of the quality of the music on the rest of the album, color us excited. [soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/107495005" params="" width=" 100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]