Shirley Bassey – The Remix Album...Diamonds Are Forever

This project could have so easily failed. Just a perfect recipe for tasteless, bland cheese. But it seems the remixers really took their jobs seriously and delivered a corking collection of juicy re-interpretations of Dame Shirley's classics.

The brassy Shirley Bassey isn’t easily forgotten. For many years, she was <b>the</b> voice of James Bond; she gained her fame singing the theme songs for several of the Bond films. She stepped back into the spotlight singing for the Propellerheads, but let’s face it: she can stand on her own two feet. This remix album takes many of her most famous deliveries and puts them on the turntable. As with most remix albums, the results are mixed, but some come out quite nicely. The Awayteam Mix of “Where Do I Begin” is a swinging affair. Nightmares on Wax and Groove Armada also do bang-up jobs. The Propellerheads don’t transform “Goldfinger” as much as put a beat under it. Kenny Dope Gonzales does the same for “Light My Fire,” but with much better results. A few tracks are dead on arrival (Wild Oscar’s “Big Spender” and Mantronix’s “Diamonds Are Forever”), but the standout surprise is Superfunk’s “Moonraker.” They take a minimal amount of the vocals and loop it into a funky space journey. Proof that great vocalists never fade; they just get bigger and brassier.