Music

Yoko Ono –  who turns 74 this Sunday –  has long occupied a significant place in contemporary culture. However, despite being recognised as a leading light of the Fluxus art movement, having exhibited all over the world and written (and produced) hundreds of her own songs (one of them –  Pet Shop Boys’ 1993 remix of ‘Walking On Thin Ice’ –  a big club hit), Ono is still best known because of the English bloke she chose to marry in 1969. Like, go figure.

Ono’s musical output has – like her conceptual art – been both acclaimed and derided. Once described by Lennon as ‘a 16 track voice’, it’s her thin but strikingly expressive instrument that most artists contributing to this LP choose to retain from the original recordings that form its basis. Wisely so, since many of these tracks would be nothing without Ono’s guttural grunts or ecstatic yelps. The guests chose to rework tracks that align with their own aesthetic: thus Peaches works her squelchy electro magic on ‘Kiss Kiss Kiss’; DJ Spooky reconfigures ‘Rising’ as a cinematic slice of breakbeat noir; Flaming Lips rejig ‘Cambridge 1969’ as an avant-jazz/Krautrock freakout; and Jason Pierce turns ‘Walking…’ into a feedback-sprayed epic. Brian Sewell – who once shockingly dismissed Ono as ‘a hanger-on’ – would do well to listen.