Ulan Bator - D-Construction
(Les Disques du Soleil et de l'Acier)
On D-Construction, French avant-rock outfit Ulan Bator offers up its catalog for
dissection and resection at the hands of four sampling superstars. Otomo Yoshihide helps
himself to two Ulan Bator tracks, most notably the debut album's "Radio Disco." Not quite
satisfied, he samples additional material from his Ground Zero associates Sachiko M and
Tatsuki Masuko and from shou player Kou Ishikawa, turntablizing the whole cartload of
sound into "Ronim Alusru," a dense, dizzying swirl of sinewaves and sampladelic debris.
French turntablist Erik M takes the skulking jazz-rock groove of "Cerf-Volant," reduces
the song to concrète rubble, and hesitantly rebuilds its likeness from memory. Voila! The
dynamically enhanced "Vol aux Vents!" Scanner strips the propulsive rock rhythm from
"Silence," scattering pulverized particles of the original track throughout the soft
ambient surges of his "Copier Coalite" mix. The EP's most impressive d-construction comes
courtesy of Carl Stone. With urgency rarely heard in his own work - and a pure
Plunderphonic sensibility owing more to John Oswald or Christian Marclay - Stone chops the
monochord core of "Embarquement" into a polyrhythmic tangle of pitch-shifted and sped-up
Ulan Bator samples. "Arboreal Mix Nut" may be only three minutes long, but it's quite a
rush.
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