Various Artists – Life Beyond Mars

There's a great Pixies documentary called 'Gouge', in which a who's who of musical cool talk about how said band are the greatest thing since sliced bread. In one classic moment, it cuts from Radiohead's Thom Yorke saying "It's impossible to cover Pixies, you just can't", straight to David Bowie, who just had (with a not terrible, but hardly inspiring and thoroughly pointless version of 'Cactus'). It might have a coincidence, but I'd like to think it was fine stroke of production nous.In a similar way, covering Bowie himself is a risky business. His music, especially back in the day, was so imaginative, so inspiring and so, frankly, genius, it's a brave band that tries to interpret those great songs. If you straight copy, it's just pointless plagiarism; if you try and do something different, you're trying to improve on classics.So it's a sound ‘bravo' to this bunch of electronic oddballs, who have in the main done a pretty good job of tackling the legend. Most have sensibly shied away from picking the singles and more obvious tracks (there's even a track from Labyrinth), although opener 'Oh! You Pretty Things' is interestingly slowed down and sexed up by Au Revoir Simone and 'Ashes to Ashes' gets the opposite, being sped up by Leo Minor to make it sound like Pulp (which actually works, just about).Other highlights for me were Carl Craig Presents Zoos of Berlin (great name that) turning 'Looking For Water' into an 80s track with a Fixx/China Crisis vibe, while Drew Brown re-imagines 'Sweet Thing' as an acoustic guitar tune overdubbed with some subtle clicks and effects. Matthew Dear's playful 'Sound & Visio'n isn't a million miles from the original, but somehow gets away with it (can't beat a good ‘bum bum'); Richard Williams & Faultline do a spacey, ambient 'Be My Wife' and 'Golden Years' gets the quirky, high-pitched treatment by Sasumu Yokota; all good stuff.Yes, there are some misses, but overall you get the impression that these bands are genuine fans of the great man without being overawed, while also getting the feeling he would generally approve of what they've done with his songs. Apparently the label has previously tackled Radiohead (an album entitled Exit Songs); on this evidence, I'll be seeking that out too. 75%