Ten years can change a lot. Sounds change, scenes shift, artists evolve, and the music that once felt like a snapshot of a particular moment can take on an entirely different life.
For San Francisco live electronic duo Host Bodies, that life continues with Daily Apparatus: 10 Year Remixes, a sprawling reimagining of their 2016 debut album that brings ten Bay Area and Los Angeles artists into the conversation.
Rather than simply dusting off an old record for an anniversary edition, Host Bodies have opened Daily Apparatus back up and handed it over to a new creative community. The result is thirteen remixes that stretch across melodic house, techno, Balearic grooves, downtempo, hip-hop, synth-pop and cinematic electronics, with some versions venturing so far from the originals that they feel like entirely new discoveries.
That’s what makes the project particularly compelling. These aren’t artists simply putting their stamp on someone else’s songs; they’re revealing how music continues to mutate once it leaves the hands of its creators.
Soul Glitch turns “On A Roll” into a deeper, more atmospheric experience, weaving saxophone, flute and electronic textures into the track. Vice Reine pushes “Towards” into a glittering meeting point between melodic techno and surrealist pop, while Chroma Sea transforms “City” into something hazier and more submerged, trading its warehouse energy for washed-out guitars, bright synths and trip-hop atmosphere.
Elsewhere, Jaya Leigh makes her streaming debut with a vibrant reinvention of “You Are Not Like Them”, bringing infectious grooves and an entirely new vocal personality to the track. Idea Unsound takes “City” in an altogether different direction, constructing an expansive cinematic piece that pulls together dubstep, UK bass, hard techno and film scoring.
And then there are Host Bodies themselves. Founders James Collector and Nick Hess — aka Swoop & Shred — revisit three of the original tracks, not attempting to recreate the past but responding to it with everything they’ve learned over the decade since.
That feels like the real heart of Daily Apparatus: 10 Year Remixes. In an industry that can sometimes seem obsessed with whatever is newest, Host Bodies have found something exciting in looking backwards — not to stay there, but to see what can still grow.
The original Daily Apparatus may not have topped the charts in 2016, but a decade later it has something arguably more interesting: a creative life beyond its original release. Its songs have become starting points for new ideas, new collaborations and new interpretations.
Photo Credit: Brady Lowery
