Full Swing - Yo La Tengo/Raumgestaltung Edits 10" and Akira Rabelais/Kit Clayton Edits 10"
(Orthlong Musork)
Orthlong Musork finally offers up the last two 10" records in Stephen
Mathieu's [Edits] series. The series, which started last fall, consists of five
records in all, each a reworking of another artist's or band's music. These last
two records, more so than the first three, hover in a kind of dream state,
sounding more like distant memories of the original tracks rather than
remixes. The Yo La Tengo track for example, composed from their Danelectro
EP, seeps in to your field of listening with slight stuttering notes that
seem to glisten on the surface of the record. The foreground and background
are constantly shifting, and as one cluster of notes fades away, another
scurries to the front to replace it. The flip side is composed of a single
guitar refrain from a song by the improv rock band Raumgestaltung, who share
their hometown with Stephan in Saarbruecken, Germany. By far the most
frightening of the tracks, it comes off sounding like an SOS from a sinking
ship picked up on an AM radio in the middle of the desert in the early hours
of the morning and has no resemblance to an electric guitar whatsoever.
Both tracks successfully meditate on a harmonic theme, which seems to be one
of Mathieu's strong points.
The Kit Clayton remix has elements of Clayton's "LATKE" 12" as well as excerpts
from one of Mathieu's live performances. Apparently the last few moments of
the track also include a sample from the Muppets' "Never Before, Never Again"
song, sung by Miss Piggy. The heartbeat of the track is a synthesized pulse
that staggers from the left to right ear, while harmonies play on top, and
organic drones undulate and shift in the background. Mesmerizing stuff, and
a far cry from the beautiful assault of Clayton's original track.
The flip side was originally composed for Akira Rabelais's Eisoptrophobia
release, a project of audio/video pieces presented on DVD. Apparently lost
in the mail, it never arrived and missed the deadline. Fortunately for us
though, it turned up here. A gentle piece, definitely the most minimal and
the most elegant. It's a ghost of a track and drones subtlety along
displaying more empty space than glitches.
A fitting end to an amazing
series. Don't hurt yourself if you missed any of these records, Musork has
plans to release the series compiled onto CD later this year.
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