This has achieved the impossible - a Grizzly Bear song stuck in my head.

Here is another interesting thing I found: Grizzly Bear's Foreground 'remixed' by Phoenix. Click on through to see why I call it a 'remix'.

My first thought on seeing that was 'wow, that's a really new way of using YouTube'. Well, turns out it isn't. Nonetheless, it was a 'why didn't I think of that?' moment. We have mashups, and video mashups, and trailer mashups, and fake subtitle humour, and this, for chrissakes. Still, it seems that every fun new way of recombining media takes me by surprise.

So, Phoenix's 'remix'. The idea, at least as they've presented it, is that everyone will hear a different mix. I started Eno first, hit play on Grizzly Bear 00:24 in, and let it play out. It sounded really good! I find Grizzly Bear a bit forgettable and wallflowery (though very pretty) and thought that having Eno's instrumental piece in the background added drama and buildup to the whole thing. Come to it, that is one thing that a mix can do really well - I find that remixes can often bring an element of momentum and drama to indie music - particularly when it's cute indie pop or that driving New York thing. So for me, the gimmick worked, and in a way I often expect a remix to work.

So, what did other people hear? I did a search for the 'Phoenix Eno Grizzly Bear' on elbo.ws and found 9 posts relating to the project. Interestingly, they didn't give me much insight into what other people heard when they played the track. Most of the results, like this one, post the link and invite the reader to judge for themselves. Some praised it highly, whilst one site declared Phoenix the 'worst remixers of all time'.

The positive review was also the only one to describe how they played (mixed? played with?) the track - and he did it very similarly to me. I wonder though - wouldn't most people? The Eno track is placed to the left, making it the 'first' if you're reading L-R. I figure an indie fan is also more likely to have heard the popular Grizzly Bear more recently than Eno's song - if they've heard it at all, being a B-Side instrumental off a 1975 ambient album. So if they're anything like me, they're going to click it first out of curiosity to see what they're mixing Grizzly Bear with. I'm also of the opinion that although this is framed as an 'aleatory' experience, an experiment with chance, it might sound more or less the same however you play with it. The Grizzly Bear track has a steady tempo and nothing much like a verse/chorus structure, with a slow sort of build. The Eno track is constructed of orchestral phrases overlapped at random, so that it is difficult to discern a tempo, beat, or tune. It also gradually crescendos. The tracks are well matched - both lack any major variety in rhythm or sound that would need to be carefully accounted for when mixing.

So, what do we call Phoenix's.. thing? Is it a mix? A toy or a rudimentary soundboard? A does the mix make a whole new 'track' like a mashup? If so, is it Phoenix's track? Or mine? Phoenix claim they "never found the boldness to mess with [Grizzly Bear's] beautiful songs". I'm going to be a little bold and say that yes, they did. Their mix was easier to put together than a conventional one, and lacks the playful, beat driven and idiosyncratic nature of most mashups. But owing to the lack of variables in the songs and the website as it is presented, I think we're hearing the 'remix' pretty much as Phoenix intended us to. And for my money, intent = art.

(Two more points I scarcely have space for - according to some quick research, Eno's ambient music was intended to be used as a background - for a space or for another musician. The Grizzly Bear song is called Foreground. Cute.)