Big Time Sensuality - album mix vs. video mix (also thread to just talk abt different versions of this song, bcz they are plentiful)

Just a refresher:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5Dc1LEn4AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wYmq2Vz5yM

I didn't have mtv at the time and didn't even know there was a video mix, but since I heard it for the first time last year it's definitively my preferred version.

I remember having a debate with ILXor-of-yore Chris P many years ago about how I thought the album cut was kind of dull and straightforward but that the video mix was really interesting and magical; he argued completely the opposite, saying that the album mix was really interesting and unique while the video mix seemed generic and disposable.

I don't even really know how to feel any more because I like them both so much! Is there some sort of general consensus, though? Is one clearly doing something more engaging and creative and genre-bending than the other?

Other versions for you to hear:

This is maybe the BEST. VERSION. EVER. It's pretty stripped down and has a tabla!!! And also some of the best vocal stylings I have ever heard from her.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uSTXn4H5jY

This one is completely rearranged and sounds like some faerie-Squarepusher shit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jCFwizrKyU

This one has one of the strangest organ sounds I've ever heard with these notes that sort of just crumble and decay (how do they do that???)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg1C1-MwQIk

FLUKE!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRr4cjjUTpk

i love the way she pronounces "sensuality"

i hadn't heard the video mix before and think it's great, but the album mix i'm used to seems less predictable, maybe a little less "easy". also i feel attached to it.

i love the way she pronounces "sensuality"

― Treeship, Sunday, August 10, 2014 11:35 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes!!!

I sang this (the album version) at karaoke the other day and it felt incredibly empowering.

video version all the way. one of the many hits of the '90s where the video mix was different (and superior to) the album version, which was so frustrating in the pre-mp3 days.

STP had a video version of "Creep" that was superior to the album one and I only just came across in 2013.

That 1st version with tabla is my fave and maybe less "of its day" than either the album or video versions.

Unsynched A/V drives me batty.

"man! i feel like a woman" also does this, and the video version is a million times better

I think the album version sounds so much more joyous and celebratory and matches the lyrics better.

The best thing about these versions sitting alongside one another is how the reposition the song's emotional focus.

The video/Fluke mix is sparkling and lustrous and makes the song feel more charged with mystery.

OTOH the album mix has a "dancing in the kitchen by the refrigerator light" (after being out all night clubbing) homey exuberance to it that feels more like a real lived experience.

I think both "interpretations" are open to the song as sung.

I also like how a few years later the Plaid remix, while going in yet a third direction, also felt like it was splitting the difference between the two a bit (some people might find it overly busy though):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfR3QZPDXIw

oh damn that Plaid mix is the one she was doing live on the Post tour!! I never even realized!

lol at "faerie-Squarepusher" in that case.

I suppose that does accurately describe mid-late-90s Plaid.

video mix by such a huge margin. album version serves up the chorus with this almost gospel-style chord build, while the video just sticks to beats and ambience, lets the vocal do the work. much prefer that approach.

Heard video version first, loved it (and video), album version always felt kinda...dinky after that. Video mix has those great opening swooshes and sci-fi zooms, setting up the "I can sense it" - this is like psychic powers, this sensuality is bigger than all of us, encompassing, landing, a spaceship descending on us. And then that big echo or whatever on Bjork's voice, most crucial I think on "Time!" - each word lands with ripples in a puddle, all matter is animated, quivering, but also somehow sacred with this whisper echoing in a cavernous church. The one thing that sorta sucks, which I'm only noticing now, is that the first minute or two really have this sense of increasing impact, further curtains keep getting drawn away, the excitement raised - and then from there it mostly just kinda lumps forward, there's a long kinda spacier break which is fine, but the stakes never get raised again.

The album version, by not ever taking us there in the first place, gets more mileage out of smaller moves, particularly the perky blurts on the keys. I don't find much in it that's sensual but I do like Tim F's "dancing in the kitchen" read - it is certainly more human. If the video version (with video) has a big flaw is that it verges on selling Bjork as the impossibly quirky delightful goddess lust object, which isn't the point of the song at all. The album version's "yee-haws!" are those of a person relishing the fun of being horny and swept up in something, but the blown-up video version sonics maybe take it too much into the ether, the pronouncements of the angel. Since I had a substantial crush on the video version of Bjork here, I can't really parse this out rationally and am voting "video" with the caveat that I'm not sure either is quite perfect, and it would have been nice to hear her do this with the Sugarcubes as a rock-band type of song.

Fluke Mix for me. This was the time when she worked with everyone and the results were great more often than not. Fluke, Talvin Singh, Plaid, beaudoin ascent, Andrew Weatherall etc etc etc. so many great mixes.

Did anything she did with Talvin Singh surface besides this live recording?

Possibly Maybe Calcutta Cyber Cafe Mix and possibly, maybe some others. I'd have to look.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

the album version is functional in a very fresh and immediate way - still sounds great. the fluke one was unnecessarily and predictably epic-sounding - it's horribly dated, to my ears.

uh uh, uh uh
(YEEE-ha!)

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

OH COME ON ILX

Oh damn missed this. A subject of much frustration at the time. Album version hands down

not sure which it is, but i like the version with the two little organ stabs just before she sings "it takes courage/to enjoy it" which one's that?

Album version

big beat tinged banger of a remix (I feel like this could be a Propellerheads remix):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5TisZ2MRl8

It's insulting to Justin Robertson to compare it to the Propellerheads. Robertson is a legend, the Propellerheads are one-hit wonders.

str8 up sunglasses-smiley MTV Grind shit right here, percussion with that kind of stuttery 909 swing that evokes "Pacific State":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1EJx3CX4oQ

xp dude that Propellerheads album is fucking brilliant as hell

this one sounds like a car commercial w/ the car driving through a congested city at night and the footage is sped up all Koyaanisqatsi style (also: really great synth stabs looped for most of it):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEjM_sRD7B8

Here's a link with some Justin Robertson mixes if you're interested in hearing more from him. http://higher-thansun.blogspot.com/search/label/justin%20robertson

video version all the way. one of the many hits of the '90s where the video mix was different (and superior to) the album version, which was so frustrating in the pre-mp3 days.

This. (Missed the vote.)