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The vast worldwide sea of laptop and desktop musicians has simply become far too predictable with atonal noise-bursts and rhythmic clicking. While the revisit of Klang Krieg's 'American Breakbeat' album has some wonderful highlights, it's almost way too excessive at a staggering 34 tracks. Presented here are remixes and reinterpretations of the original release—29 contributions from North American electronic artists—by electronic artists from (almost*) elsewhere in the world. [*Note to Klang Krieg: Mexico is still part of North America.]Klang Krieg
Tracks like the reinterpretation of Matmos's "Count Tweekula" from Japan's Sonic Dragolo add a clever and even more comical twist by hijacking j-pop and exotica influences, cutting and pasting them into a vocalized mix that would make Ms. Solex proud. Chris Wood's string arrangement on Timeblind's "Jitter" is possibly one of the most beautiful songs on the compilation along with Syntetika's labelmates, Ambidextrous, (do yourself a favor and re-read the Syntetika review) make a serene, languid, melodic reconstruction of "Salty" by Blink Blink. I'm also epecially fond of "Melancholic Music Box," the Rosy Parlane reinterpretation of Hrvatski's "Insect Digestion Melody," reformatted for a thunderous music box and the Fibla remix of Marumari's "Super Botany," with pleasant Morr-like guitar sounds that easily jumps the tracks from the nerdy laptop boy express into the chin-scratching pseudo-electronica post-post-post rock shuttle. There's too many electro-fart remixes of Kid 606, however, and the good parts just don't seem to go on long enough. At the super-cheap price I paid for this set, however, those few low points can easily be overlooked.
 
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- Buug - Kaylek 2 (remixed by Plastacas)
- Matmos - Count Tweekula (remixed by Sonic Dragolo
- Timeblind - Jitter (remixed by Chris Wood)
- Marumari - Sonic Botany (remixed by Fibla)
 
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This four-track EP, the third release from Scott Herren on the Warp label under his Prefuse 73 alias, makes for a broad yet fleeting assortment of instrumental HipHop inspired music. The absence of vocalists and/or MCs has the listener focused on the behind the scenes make-up of some great compositions. Not to say that the right vocalists and/or MCs wouldn't enhance things, as evident on 2001's "Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives."Warp
The opening track "Desks.Pencils.Bottles" names the elements used to provide the busy melodic percussion and distant drones, anchored with a synth-heavy bassline and a shuffle rhythm (coupled with a human beatbox) which skips the tune along perfectly. "When Irony Wears Thin" kicks it with the big band-esque shots of a reworked horn section over Moogish sounds and the bells, bips and bleeps of a gear-shifting rhythm track. "It Never Entered" lays down an "old school" styled funk groove as the base for the calm and collected sampled progressions of what sounds like a choir, eventually going to a serene half-time feel. "Love You Bring" closes off the disc with a sampled string section, acoustic guitar, droning keyboards and some pleasant female vocal clippings over a groove with a kick drum that'll get you right in the chest. Being called a collection, one may expect a lot more than four tracks over a ten year period. This may be that Mr. Herren has been a busy guy with his other projects (Savath+Savalas, Eastern Developments label) which differ from Prefuse to accumulate a lot of extra material. Here's hoping for another full lengther.
 
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The Staubgold site helpfully offers this quotation from Ehlers: "The'Plays' series deals with 'reference' ... Everyone is sampling;sampling is the figure of historic devices in digital music. My idea isnot to sample, but to refer to historic places and figures." And so herefers not only to musicians (Albert Ayler, Cornelius Cardew, andRobert Johnson) but to actor and director John Cassavetes, and theenigmatic Hubert Fichte, who is variously documented on the web as aqueer theorist, an anthropologist, and a beat poet.
These referential intentions work well for the most part, reversing theusual process of listening to music based on sampled material: insteadof noticing or just assuming I'm hearing "quotations" from other music,I've tried to decode it using my knowledge—however pitiful at times—ofits subject.
Thankfully, though it may enrich it, knowledge of the five subjects'biographies is not essential to appreciating the music. "PlaysCornelius Cardew", one of the 7"s, and "Plays John Cassavetes", one ofthe mini-LPs, are basically drone and loop-based, using organs andviolins—sometimes as walls of sound, others more sparsely. Ehlers takesa much more interesting approach on the "Plays Albert Ayler" and "PlaysHubert Fichte" mini-LPs, confidently subjecting raw recordings to hisdigital knife. These are the must-listen highlights of the CD. "PlaysHubert Fichte" puts lazily picked guitar from Joseph Suchy in thebackground of a night chorus of buzzing and chirping modifications,like improvisation overheard on a hot evening. The meticulouslyarranged "Plays Albert Ayler" uses similar processing techniques but,being based on Anka Hirsch's cello and other orchestralinstrumentation, is more austere and graceful. You may have heard thissort of thing before, but here it's done with a taste and judgmentthat's far from common.
The CD closes with the "Plays Robert Johnson" 7", one side processedguitar fumbling, and the other a micro-house funk-out that's funny butdefinitely out of character with the rest of the series. Nonetheless,it adds to the diversity of this occasionally inspired collection,which confirms Ehlers as one of the best musicians working at thetheory-heavy end of the post-digital scene.
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