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When Yoko Ono heard England-based DJ Superchumbo's remix of her "Kiss Kiss Kiss" recently, she immediately noticed one difference. "The beat," she says. "The first one I did myself and I liked it, but [the remix] is a totally different thing. The beat is much more danceable, which is great."
Superchumbo's mix, the second in what Ono envisions as a series of remixes of her work, follows Vermont collective Orange Factory's take on Ono's "Open Your Box," which become a club hit late last year. "I'd just forgotten about [the 'Open Your Box' remix project]," she says, "and then they came back with a mix, and I played it and I started crying because it was so beautiful. In 1968, when I did my first record [with soon-to-be-husband John Lennon], it was called Unfinished Music, No. 1: Two Virgins, and the next one was called Unfinished Music, No. 2: Life With the Lions, so at the time I was saying my music is unfinished and you're supposed to put your effort on it and make something out of it."
With guest appearances at clubs in Miami and San Francisco in support of the "Open Your Box" and "Kiss Kiss Kiss" remixes, Ono's been getting a healthy sampling of the current dance club scene. "It's inspired me in a different direction spiritually," she says. "Seeing people dancing and enjoying it, I just love that. There were many times I felt like dance music was so important. John and I actually once were thinking, 'Why don't we create a dance, you know a dance movement and put the instructions of how to do this new dance on the back of an album.' And he started to roll on the floor, trying to find a unique kind of action. But it just didn't happen. It was a bit difficult."
After a recent show at the Roxy in New York that paired performance art with the remixes, Ono hopes to put on future productions in the same vein. "It was like twelve minutes. It was very intense," she says. "I felt that maybe some people might have noticed the mixture of performance art and disco dancing and felt good about it, and now I'm exploring some new areas and mixing it with the new stuff. That's the direction I'm going in."
As for new material, Ono plans to enter a New York studio in the coming weeks to begin recording an album, her follow-up to 2001's Blueprint for a Sunrise. "I have a few songs," she says. "Until I finish it I won't really know what it's going to be like. My usual stuff, I suppose."
COLIN DEVENISH
(August 12, 2002)