From Jeffery Cohen Sent Thu, Jul 2nd 1998, 05:07
From Jeffery Cohen Sent Thu, Jul 2nd 1998, 05:07
starting to get fed up with the glut of beaten-to-death material, so i'm
taking the proactive stance. . went through the crates and pulled some
things i thought were deserving of attention.
DJ Spooky - Synthetic Fury EP (Asphodel)
I usually can't get into Paul D. Miller's urban/illbient
sound because it seems really drawn out and the self-hype
doesn't help either.
But with this release, my attitude is taking a turn.
Miller takes a mash-up, cut-up approach, bringing together many
different elements, which seems to be truer to his roots. I
read an interview of him where he talked about how his mom
used to get on him about always having the tv, radio and
record player on, and he just thought it normal to have all the
sources coming through to him at one time. He translates this
really well on this EP.
The a-side starts off with an air-raid siren, being mashed
up with some harsh scratching, like scratching over feedback, and
then the pointed strings from Psycho stab through. Some better
scratching comes through, along with a message about what "you are
about to witness".
Some more echoed, stabbing strings come in, along with some
hip-hop styled samples, and an underlying beat. The soundtrack
to some fucked-up carnival fun house plays, and all the elements
start to become really hectic and chaotic.
The strings from before come back into the picture. It starts
to break down into a funky little hip-hop number, but it gets chased
away by the chaos coming back around, along with those strings again.
The rest of the side goes into some dub territory with Spooky's
stamp on it.
The first track on the b-side was done with Panacea, everyone's
favorite Chrome All-Star, and is quite evident. The Panacea sound is all
over this side. This side travels through some dirty techstep-y type of
chaos, but changing focus on breaks and basses. Not just emphasizing the
break, or the bass, but bringing in a whole new one, and then going back
to the old. Cut-up, cut-cut-up. :) The breaks grow distant and the sound
of NY in the morning, after you just woke up, comes in.
There's a minute or so reprieve in between tracks 1 / 3, with the
sound of dialing up the next audio attack.
Wait, what's this? Hip-hop? Well, for 3 minutes, yeah, but
Panacea's influence comes stomping on by again, and back into the
distorted breaks we go. . A downright pissed-off modem cuts through, then
gets cut off by the breaks, which fade out into a minute or so of a nice
ambient soundscape, allowing you to catch your breath. .
Hip-hop styled cut-up, fucked-up sonic chaotic bombing.
And, if you're in the U.S., it's at domestic prices.
.jeff / chris.
.do not condemn the judgement of another because it differs from your own.
\-. you may both be wrong .-/