Toronto Producer Kare Made an Ambient Cover of "Better Off Alone" So We Quizzed Her About Eurotrance

As the millennium shifted and the would-be apocalypse of Y2K was nigh, one group of artists dared to ask a simple question, one that ran counter to the prevailing musical mood of the decade prior with the force of the original punk movement: Who Needs Guitars Anyway? Alice Deejay, the Dutch trance-pop collective who hit it big with the immortal "Better Off Alone," made this query more than 15 years ago when they released their only album of the same name. There has yet to be a true, definite answer to it, but Kare,​ a Torontonian producer and DJ, may have found something close to it with her melancholy, ambient cover of "Better Off Alone."

Replacing the "O" in the original's title with a more cyberpunk "0," Kare's version of the classic is subdued and dreamy, centering on her hypnotic repetitions of its chorus amidst clouds of synth pads and electric piano. It's another example of the deconstruction of 90s nostalgia that fuels several sectors of Soundcloud. It's not unreasonable to assume lots of producers coming of age now heard doofy trance hits like "Better Off Alone" as their first exposure to electronic music and attempt to re-contextualize these early memories with their own music. Anyways, instead of further exploring this fascinating and complex topic, we reached out to Kare over e-mail to ask about memes. Listen to "Better 0ff Alone" below and read on for our interview.

Noisey: Why cover this song, now, in 2016? How'd the idea come about?

Kare: TBH this remix was the culmination of a lot of weird stuff happening to me in the last little bit, being alone and kinda sad when someone put the breaks on a "thing" if you know what I mean. Anyway, the phrase was echoing around in my head cause I have this shirt and it was reminding me how great the track is. I am fully into any song, especially electronic dance music that talks about love/sex with a minor key or melody, I think it is just a more realistic representation, ya know?

Did Darude - Sandstorm ever occur to you as another possible cover choice, as far as similar music from that era goes?

Hahahaha. Firstly, have you seen all the Darude Sandstorm remixes online? There are literally thousands! I could never compete really, truly. Cursory google searches will turn up "Darude Dankstorm," "Darude Dankstorm Airhorn Remix," "Darude Sandstorm 10 hours Remix," and tons of dubstep-bass-boosted versions. I think this is a catalog that I will respectfully not participate in, because I could never compete with those remixes!

"Better Off Alone" is considered kinda cheesy and silly by most modern standards but the chords and melody are actually very emotional, which your cover really emphasizes. How does that component of 90s trance (or any dance music) influence your work?

Dance music resides very near and dear to my heart, it is what I usually find myself listening to 70% of the time, and what I love to DJ, but rarely do I make any dance music. What I think people forget a lot of the time when thinking about electronic dance music is that it is constantly pigeonholed as "party music," to be a shallow genre of music whose only purpose is to get people "jumpin." We always forget that party music is the soundtrack to so many of the foundations of our relationships in our lives, tracks like this are what we listen to when we meet lovers and friends on the dance floor, and it's how we bond in "the club". Dance music producers are capable of capturing authentic human emotion, and when they do that I honestly believe it's magic.  If I am able to capture a little bit of that magic I'm happy. :)

What do you think is appealing about music from the turn of the millennium?

I think it was the combination of the excitement of pop music, over the trance-inspired beats, probably the drugs, and you get a sense that the people partying in this generation were just beginning to understand freedom and exploration within party spaces.

Lastly: After all this time, do we need guitars, anyway?

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Single artwork by Aaron Wynia.

​Phil will never get over the late 90s. Follow him on Twitter.​