This is that rare beast-- the remix EP that's better than the original. Takako Minekawa's Cloudy Cloud Calculator was a solid record, but Minekawa's gooey pop instincts occasionally rendered the tunes a little too cute for their own good. After listening to Ximer, we realize that some of the problem must have been in the beat. In fact, almost without exception, the rhythmic edge lent by most of the remixers here adds the finishing touch to Minekawa's well- crafted sound, ultimately boosting the songs a notch.

The best of example of this is Cornelius' picture- perfect reworking of "Milk Rock." Da Man from Japan takes a decent song and drapes it in a fluffy blanket of Casio jungle breakbeats, keeping the innocence and sweetness of the original intact while adding a sublime and poppy acoustic guitar to map out the changes. The final outcome is a fine, fine track that would fit nicely on one of Darla's "Drum-n-Bliss" compilations.

Next up is "Telstar," which gets the dramatic string treatment from Mark Borthwick and Trevor Holland, followed Kid Loco's spicing up of "Black Forest," with its killer guitar pattern lifted, Indiana Jones- style, from the '70s funk Temple of Boom. Loco combines the wide- eyed melody with a gritty groove perfect for windows- down rolling through the night streets of Tokyo. Make sure to take out the Lincoln Town Car.

On the more experimental tip is the obligatory Oval track, a radical rethinking of "International Velvet." As usual, Oval treats the source track like any another sound file-- something to be fed into the computer and twisted. Markus Popp's Macintosh shapes the song to sound like something from Oval's Dok, sparing only the faintest echo of Minekawa's voice. When her petite pipes break through, it sounds as though she's crying out from the depths of the "Tron" motherboard-- you want to jump in and help, but then you remember what happened to that kid in the computer. (Actually, you don't remember that very well, because you only saw the movie once and it was a long, long time ago, but you want to jump in and help, anyway.) Popp throws in a lulling little CD skip to give the track some rhythm, not to mention his trademark 15khz sine wave to give the hairs in your ear canal a workout. In three words: it is beautiful.

Also of note are Nobukazu Takemura's electronic bossa nova rendition of "Phonoballoon Song" which utilizes some nice Steve Reich-ish percussion, and Sweet Trip's techno- soaked spin on "Cat House" which closes the EP on an up note. Ultimately, Ximer isn't going to change the world, but it gives a good name to the tiresome notion of the remix record.

-Mark Richard-San