Manic Street Preachers singer James Dean Bradfield chooses his favourite Manics remixes…

David Holmes: ‘If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next’ (The Class Reunion Of The Sunset Marquis Mix)

“I’d met David at The Heavenly Sunday Social and we’d talked about shared bits of history, about places like The Limelight Club in Belfast where we played at the start of the 90s, around the time of ‘Motown Junk’. I really got on with him, and he had a great line in pink shirts at that point. Pretty sure I did too. I bought his album ‘This Film’s Crap, Let’s Slash the Seats’ which I really enjoyed, to the point where I’d tried to sample bits from it for B-sides and things.

“We went on to do work together on Know Your Enemy which I really loved - Freedom of Speech Won’t Feed My Children is incredible, and he got Kevin Shields to play on it. I began to understand David as somebody who really knew that there’s so much you can do with one chord. There’s so much life in one chord; his music brilliantly investigates that.

“Before that, he did an amazing job on ‘Tolerate’. It sounds like it could have been in ‘Out of Sight’, which he did the soundtrack for.”

Stealth Sonic Orchestra: ‘Kevin Carter’ 

“Howard Gray was one of my favourite engineers in the 80s. He’d worked on Simple Minds’ ‘Sparkle in the Rain’, so he’d created these massive soundscapes on tracks like ‘Waterfront’ and ‘Speed Your Love to Me’, records I’d properly grown up with. Rob Stringer, our A&R man, knew him and introduced us. 

“We ended up doing the track ‘Prologue to History’ with him which was a good experience, but for some reason we left it off ‘This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours’. 

“Before that, Howard did some of his Stealth Sonic mixes for tracks off ‘Everything Must Go’. This mix was just beautiful. It’s the closest we’ve ever got to the soul of Ennio Morricone, to the meaning of Ennio Morricone. His version of ‘Kevin Carter’ really manages to bring out the crime-noir element of the song.”

The Dust Brothers: ‘La Tristesse Durera’

“The Chemical Brothers were the Dust Brothers when they did this, and I was thrilled when they took it on. They’d just made what I consider one of the greatest dance records of the 90s: ‘Chemical Beats’. I have such great memories of listening to ‘Chemical Beats’ next to ‘Under the Influence of Love’ by Love Unlimited at the Sunday Social. It’s a really vivid memory for me. So when they were up for doing this in the same year that ‘Chemical Beats’ came out, I was absolutely made up. It turned out amazing.”

Andrew Weatherall: ‘Peeled Apples’

“I met Andrew Weatherall through Jeff Barrett many times. He was always such a chap, and so lovely, and his music carried on being brilliant every time he shifted. I remember loving ‘Clock Factory’ and ‘RSD’ on the first Sabres Of Paradise album (‘Sabresonic’). When Andrew agreed to remix this track, I was intrigued by what he’d come up with. His version is even more stripped back than the one we recorded, and heavier too. On our original recording, we’d imagined the track as though PiL had been recorded by Steve Albini. Without knowing that, Weatherall’s version was even closer to that target than ours. Just amazing.”

Saint Etienne: ‘Jackie Collins Existential Question Time’

“I wasn’t quite sure about this at first – Bob, Pete and Sarah see the world through a different lens to me. Now though I absolutely love it, even though it took me a couple of years to come around to the way this track fits into the lyric itself. Then one day I put it on and realised that Richey would have absolutely loved the double-down, satirical nature of what they did. Beyond that, it’s just played with such taste. Everything fits together like the most beautiful jigsaw. It just shows what a little bit of maturity can do for your own judgement.”

New Young Pony Club: ‘Marlon J.D.’

“This remix sounds like Charli xcx to me. It’s almost like one of those time-travel stories. It’s quite startling how up to date it sounds. This mix was part of a good trade-off. [James did NYPC’s ‘Chaos’ (South Wales Swamp mix) around the same time]. Their mix is just brilliant and future-thinking. It could have been done yesterday.” 

Adem Ilhan: ‘Facing Page: Top Left’

“Sometimes, when you get a great remix done, it can be exciting but also really deflating, because you think, ‘Wow, I wish this person had produced the track.’ That’s definitely the case with this one. Every time I go back and listen to it, it makes me realise how interesting it would have been to do a whole record with Adem, to see what he would have done with our ideas, with my voice, with Nicky’s voice – just to see what he might have done with any of the loose concepts we usually start a record with. What he did to this track is slightly disturbing, but also utterly perfect.”

The Avalanches: ‘So Why So Sad’

“Again, another example of wishing we’d actually put the remix out instead of our own version. It’s got so much swing and joy to it. Swing and joy aren’t necessarily the easiest emotions for Manic Street Preachers to access in the studio, but the natural swing and joy The Avalanches brought to this song is undeniable, and so addictive. This remix should have been the first single from ‘Know Your Enemy’.”

Cornelius: ‘Tsunami’

“It was really hard for somebody to remix one of our songs at that time, because they were such big hits and such a huge part of the cultural landscape. For somebody to take one of these songs on and make it their own was a challenging task, but Cornelius did it with this. You can hear the XTC reference points in his remix, and it came close to making me feel as though it could have been the original release, rather than what we did in the studio. It was a close-run thing. I love this mix.”‍

Steven Wilson: ‘1985’

“When growing up in the Valleys, I was starting to get into rap: things like Ultramagnetic MCs, Public Enemy, Ice Cube. Through those records, I tried to work out what 12-inch remixes were. We were coming out of the era of Frankie Goes to Hollywood putting out extended remixes every week. That led to a young, innocent me and my insanely naive young Welsh brain thinking that Big Country’s ‘Wonderland’ 12-inch remix was the height of reinventing rock music with a dance edge.

“When I went back and listened to those things years later, I realised there was real value in those 12-inches. They were banging, and there was an instant impact to them, but there was also a massive added value in simply letting the band breathe. That’s what those remixes did, and that’s what Steven Wilson did with ‘1985’, and I absolutely love it. It’s glorious and it lets every aspect of the song glow, in its own time. Every time I think of ‘1985’, I keep thinking that we’ve got to play the Steven Wilson version rather than our own. It’s that good.” 

Erol Alkan: ‘Europa Geht Durch Mich’ (Erol Alkan’s Mesmerise Zwei Rework) 

“We’d wanted Erol to do a mix for us for ages. ‘Futurology’ gave us the opportunity to ask him, after our mutual friend Kieran Evans (Manics live visual artist and occasional Phantasy Records filmmaker) said he was up for it. ‘Europa Geht Durch Mich’ had the right feel so we gave it to him to see what might come back. As soon as I heard this mix I thought: ‘Wow, this is the ‘Autobahn’ reimagined yet again, now in the spirit of ‘Tron (Legacy)’.’ Listening to it, there’s a constant feeling of trying to catch the horizon with your eyes but it moves too fast and always escapes you, like the video for ‘Star Guitar’ by The Chemical Brothers. A proper nod to Europe.”

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Read Erol Alkan's memories of supporting the Manic Street Preachers at the Roundhouse, 2014