New Music: Helicon x AL LOVER – It Won’t Stop (Barry Burns, Mogwai remix)

The best remixes come close to, if not become, art in their own right. This take on It Won’t Stop fits the bill perfectly.

The opening number on a new remix album of January’s Helicon and AL LOVER Arise collaboration, Mogwai’s Barry Burns deconstructs the track without decontextualising it. The band’s neo-psych-rock is a constant presence, but Burns takes the mood and temperature to minus figures here. Where the vocals once eased in and around a thumping, thunderous wall of guitars, twisted dancehall, and trip-hop, Burns freezes the guitars in time and space; the electronics rumble like an imminent tsunami – you notice both absence and presence here. This is to be played LOUD!  

Alongside this take on It Won’t Stop by Burns, the vinyl album features remixes from Chris Geddes of Belle & Sebastian, Alex Maas of The Black Angels, Mark Gardener of Ride, Man of Moon (Scotland), The Janitors (Sweden) and D-Ross (Scotland). The expanded digital edition also includes contributions from Acid Rooster (Germany), Tremours (USA), Declan Welsh (Scotland), AL LOVER, and a brand-new HELICON x AL LOVER track, Bring You Round.

Says Helicon’s John-Paul Hughes about the remix, “We’ve never made any secret of our respect and admiration for Mogwai, so to have Barry work on this remix is really cool. He’s come at a pretty dark song about being alone with your own head at night from a completely different angle and found a whole new level of unsettling tension. In a good way, if that’s your thing. Because it’s definitely ours.”

Burns adds, “I’m dead happy with how this remix turned out, and I can’t believe they made a cracking video for it AND gave me whisky. MATES4LYF.”

For AL LOVER, the project brings the collaboration back to where it began. “Since the HELICON X AL LOVER connection started with a remix, it’s only natural to have this collaborative project head in that direction. I see remix culture as folk tradition through the lens of technology. It’s all meat on the same bone, and I’m glad to have had this project be part of that lineage.”

It Won’t Stop (Barry Burns, Mogwai remix) is taken from Helicon’s new Arise Remixes album, out on the 5th of February 2027. You can pre-order the digital edition on Bandcamp; for vinyl versions, make your way to the official Fuzz Club webstores.

Helicon have lined up live appearances in the UK from November up to Easter ’27. Get details of those, plus updates on Arise Remixes, by checking out Helicon on Instagram or Facebook.