FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1999. All Rights Reserved

Beatz Me by FFWD Staff If you’re under the impression that all this electronic music is only a fad and will soon fade away, you’re forgetting its venerable history. When pioneers like Wendy Carlos, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, and Vangelis started using synthesizers to create music around 30 years ago, they too were told that they were only toys and that music from a box would never be considered credible. Thankfully, some peoples’ interpretations of "boxes" were broader and they realized that guitars, violins and cellos are only boxes with strings, drums are just boxes you hit, and horns are basically boxes you blow through (as any kid with an empty pack of Glossette’s or Smarties will be only too happy to demonstrate). Presaging the aforementioned artists in the mid-’60s with an even broader view was Steve Reich, the first composer to use tape loops. His pieces "Come Out" and "It’s Gonna Rain" layered the same samples over each other and, as they slowly went out of phase, they created strange rhythms and pulses which eventually led him to compose music for instruments that did the same. Reich Remixed (Nonesuch) pays homage to one of the fathers of cut ’n’ paste by assigning some of today’s big name producers to manipulate his work. Like the composer’s original material, these are mainly meditative and pensive pieces built around the trance-inducing effects of repetition. This holds especially true for DJ Spooky’s soundscape re-sculpting of "City Life," Howie B’s pussyfootin’ around "Eight Lines" and Tranquility Bass’s masterful "Megamix," where portions of nine of Reich’s original compositions are mixed overtop a minimal sub-bassline. It’s not all without teeth, though. Coldcut’s remix of "Music for 18 Musicians" is a majestic Tangerine Dream-like breakbeat epic, Andrea Parker gives us brooding electro on her version of "The Four Sections" and Mantronik slides the pitch up to plus eight for a futuristic assault on his collaborators such as DJ Takemura, D*Note and Ken Ishii. Put it all together and you have a collection of broadminded producers carrying the torch for experimental beauty that has been passed on to them by the subject of their project. An experimental collaboration of a different kind comes from Glasgow’s Sushil K. Dade, otherwise known as Future Pilot AKA. Through the mail, by telephone or in person, all-around artist Dade swapped ideas and material with such diverse performers as Two Lone Swordsmen, Brix Smith, Alan Vega, Scanner and Cornershop for his new album, Future Pilot AKA Vs. A Galaxy of Sound (Sulfur). It’s a massive undertaking that’s spread over two discs which, like most far-reaching projects, tends to fall short of its grasp on occasion. Despite crap like The Pastes’ lame (as in crippled and limping) "Hurricane Fighter Plane," Inyo San’s unexciting experimentalism, lots of filler from Bill Wells and the beyond-annoying little Speak and Spell intros to each song that work on you like Chinese water torture, there are some glowing moments. The Two Lone Swordsmen sport a lush cinematic scoring style on "The Gates To Film City," Cornershop and the Ranjit Nagar All Stars each do their tasty take on tandoori jazzfunk, while the delay drenched Hindub of "Indians at NASA" and the spacey future-retro "Fresh Milk!" are enough to keep the smokers smilin’. It’s not an all beat-based affair, though, with sprinklings of acoustic pieces – Suckmonster’s haunting traditionalesque "Japan" and National Park sounding like a good Velvet Underground/Luna clone on the closer "Sterling." All in all, had the material been judiciously pared down to one disc, it would have been brilliant instead of simply okay.

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