Fabricate
Grooves Magazine

A strong name for a trio that hangs out in the less-muscular post-rock and ambient genres, Charles Atlas gets the remix treatment for its 2002 Worsted Weight album from a collection of the all-underrated team in the IDM and space-rock fields, including the likes of Strategy, Tele:Funken, and the Telescopes.
You can certainly listen to Fabricate as all of a piece, since everyone seems t color their mixes with the same range of crayons -- think the various shades of brown in a 64-pack of Crayolas. However, now and then, a track may cause you to perk up your ears and pay a bit more attention. Sybarite's reworking of "Sun with Teeth" peppers the simple melody and muted strings with drum-machine pops and a sly sax, and Casino vs. Japan grounds its typical hash-pipe electronics with a spaghetti-western guitar lick on its mix of "The Deades Bar." On its version of "Strategies for Success Boxes", Pram goes lounge with tinkling electric piano and smoove organ washes, while Signaldrift dares to get funky with a backbeat on its take on the same song. Isan adds some tension to its remix of "One Foot Under," with melodramatic strings seargin as a counterpoint to the pensive one-hand keyboard melody, and Nudge closes things off with a ride in the sunset, complete with requisite brittly chiming guitars and plaintive trumpet.
While there isn't a bum track on Fabricate, some mixes seem to drift away from your consciousness more than others (particularly the one-two combo of Isan's "Elysium" mix and Stendec's "Port, Noise Complaint" version). It walks a fine line just on this side of a coffeehouse playlist.

--Sean Portney