Annie - Happy Without You Remixes
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Sitting in the back of a taxi travelling around a European city, looking longingly out of the window before she is dropped off at a nightclub filled with beautiful people bathed in neon light. That’s the video for ‘Heartbeat’ by Scandinavian pop starlet Annie. You can find it on her website.

This remix single is to be released as a 12” promo, passed around the clubs. It’s a mix of an original track, Happy Without You, taken from her forthcoming debut album, Anniemal, by British DJ Riton., with another by Paris-based producer Sebastien.

The Riton mix is pop electroclash – It’s all squirty synths and drums with Annie’s sweet vocals laid over. Like much of her material, it is the sort of European dreampop that sounds like Saint Etienne, who she has supported on tour. It’s glitzy and glamorous but sad and lonely – just like the video of her in the back of a taxi.

The Sebastien mix tears the track up a bit more – it’s dirtier, the groove is more for a sleazy, underground club. But still it’s full of pop electronics, while the vocals flit in and out of focus as the industrial beat breaks apart and pulls itself back together.

She’s had big names working on her album - Richard X (who did the Sugababes’ Freak Like Me), Royksopp and Moloko, and has been mentioned alongside Kylie Minogue. She does the sort of thing that Kylie did with Can’t Get You Out Of My Head and Come Into My World – glorious, futuristic pop that pulls leftfield stuff right up into the mainstream.

This is forward-thinking music that doesn’t isolate itself in its on scene but stands-up and fights by the rules of the top chart acts. But like Saint Etienne, she may suffer from being too pop for the indie crowd and too avant for the pop charts. However, if it’s on the margins of things where exciting, creative, new stuff is supposed to come from then Annie has planted her feet in the right place.