"American Breakbeat Rebuilt"

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.

 

samples:

• 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)