The Faint, "The Conductor (Thin White Duke Mix)" (2003)

Free label samplers given out by record stores with any purchase: they're pretty useless, aren't they? Most of the time they are filled with acts that "need to be promoted," i.e., not that good, and samplers also by nature toss together all the different acts on the label, so it's unlikely you'll ever like the whole thing. Plus, the samplers that come in cardboard sleeves just get filed away, and since there're no spines you're never reminded that you even have them in your collection, and so they just sit there until one day you finally think to play the CD next to the sampler, and so at long last the little cardboard sleeve falls down and plonks you on the head.

I can't even remember which proper CD purchase entitled me to this Astralwerks 2003 sampler. But one plonk later, I realized that it at least has one of the less common Thin White Duke mixes. A lot of Stuart's remixing tricks are in place here: the repeating "control control control" vocal loop, which is comparable to last year's remix of Missy Elliot's "Lose 'hypnotic robotic hypnotic robotic' Control," and the way the song builds and builds is by now a recognizable Lu Contism. This remix has some nice pizzicato strings, though; off the top of my head I don't remember if they've featured on other mixes, but then again I have a bit of a concussion.