The Eraser rubbed up the wrong way

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THE unavoidable benchmarks for Thom Yorke's The Eraser Remixes - already in stores as three vinyl EPs and available as a CD on import from next Tuesday - set quite a high standard.

The first obvious comparison would be the original The Eraser album, which was Mercury Music Prize nominated and even one of Isaac Ashe's coveted albums of the year, as well as the more electronic leaning Radiohead LPs such as the hugely popular Kid A, and then Thom Yorke's previous dance dabblings with UNKLE.

So no surprise then that this release is a little underwhelming.

The opener, current Mercury nominee Burial's dubstep reworking of And It Rained All Night, replaces the rumbling melody of the original with a sparse, uninspiring garage beat, and although the Modeselektor and Various remixes that follow are a little more inventive, it takes until track four, Four Tet's beautiful remix of Atoms For Peace, for the album to start in earnest.

While Christian Vogel's Spare Parts Remix of orginal The Eraser standout Black Swan and the The Bug remix of single Harrowdown Hill are worth individual attention, overall the album is probably not worth the £25 it'll cost to have it shipped over.

A hit-and-miss affair, The Eraser Remixes is probably one to forget about.