If there was ever an album in need of no outside assistance, it's Klaus Waldeck's Balance of the Force. Waldeck left pursuing a career as a lawyer to become a record producer. Having knocked around the cheesy-quaver rave circuit until in 1992, Waldeck picked up on trip-hop and laid down what was to become the basic outline of his debut album, Balance of the Force. Before it was released last year, Waldeck himself had fiddled around with it for about four years; then Kruder and Dorfmeister tinkered around with the tracks before granting their coveted imprimatur.

Who knows what Waldeck's original record sounded like? It's been through so many iterations and so-called refinements that probably even Klaus doesn't remember. So, sensing that he might as well go the full nine yards, Waldeck sent his album out to a bunch of usual suspects (Thievery Corporation, Rockers Hi-Fi, Fauna Flash) for a bit of remixing. If you can't realize your own artistic vision, you might as well cash in on somebody else's.

The sequencing of this record is pretty unfortunate, as it pops its wad right at the beginning with Mushroom Dive's cavernous dub-outing of "Northern Lights," the most crucial track on the original version of this album. Mushroom Dive, if anything, have rendered the song even more skunk-paranoid. Thievery Corporation persist in convincing me that their sole claim to credibility is their indisputably spot-on choice of tailor. If only their productions were so sharp! Fauna Flash recycle their standard jump-up drum-n-bass riddim and splice in Waldeck's "Defenseless," and quite ruining this fragile ballad in the process. Blackwing drew the short straw and ended up remixing the execrably faux-empowering and consciousness-raising "Children of the Ghetto."

Had Waldeck asked the likes of Two Lone Swordsmen, Solvent, or Echoboy to remix his album, the results would have made most of us sit up and take notice-- maybe even give him cash as well as props. As it stands, Balance of the Force Remixed would hardly even rouse us from a light slumber.

-Paul Cooper