Róisín Murphy: Crooked Machine

Open share drawer More intimate and less reverential than a traditional remix album, collaborator Richard Barratt’s full-length rework casts Róisín Machine in deeper shades of modern house and techno. Along with the release of her sublime fifth record Róisín Machine, Róisín Murphy spent 2020 bestowing fans with remixes, extended cuts, and alternate versions with the drunken benevolence of someone throwing dollar bills off a club balcony. These new edits—which included extended disco cuts; truncated pop edits; wonky, late-night remakes by album collaborator DJ Parrot, aka Richard Barratt; and one squelching, completely essential Soulwax remix—weren’t just streaming-optimized cash grabs or irrelevant leftovers. They made good on the album’s avowed philosophy of “I’ll make my own happy ending”—ways for listeners, who, for the most part, had to engage with the album’s paean to nightlife from their homes, to craft perfect nights to suit their own needs, handed over by a diva with enough dancefloor experience to know that sometimes, more