Warn Defever - "Remixes" (Time-Stereo)

This CD-R compiles 18 different remixes by Warn Defever, released some time in the late 90's during this brief period when indie artists were getting into "remixes", clearly an attempt to reclaim the creative dub-act from popular R&B artists, rappers, etc. This is a mixed bag and not really attributable to Defever, but where else do I file it? It ranges from really raw, amateurish pop/folk (courtest of Deonna & Laura who appear twice) and more abstract, dance rhythms. Warn's remix of Astor Piazolla's "Unauthorized" is the real centerpiece of the CD, turning the tango master into a slowed-down trip-hop meditation that barely resembles any tango I've ever heard. Thurston Moore's 'Roots' is likewise a hissy, hazy set of bumps and bruises. My taste for Defever is generally for his Harry Smith-influenced tracks, and the total powerpop - his more "urban" aesthetics often leave me feeling a bit uneasy, and the 90's electronica vibe that infuses much of this disc makes it less than enthralling for my ears. But when he's remixing his own projects, or projects he is close to (Control Panel, The ESP's, Flashpapr) it's at it's best - taking on the wax cylinder vibe that infuses the 100 Years disc recently reviewed here, it's an otherworldly midwest distance that I totally love. Not being familiar with any of the original tunes except for Run On's 'Don't Go' (except it was called 'Go There' when I first fell in love with it). Said track gets a warbly, dubby jam which is lackluster until the Alan Licht guitar slaying comes in, super-processed here into an insane computerised sludge - but just for a second! I'm not sure to what extent Warn is actually intervening -- Happy Apple's 'Sad Song' is a total classic country strum, with weird domestic noise overtop, sounding almost like he just played it through a boom box and then re-recorded it with room sounds. The effect, though, is mesmerising anyway, at least to these ears. I'm not wild about the needless electronic percussion in much of this, but then Godzuki takes on a power-pop/twee side I don't remember about them at all when I saw them in 1995. If I had an unlimited budget I'd probably buy everything on Time-Stereo, but this I just picked up when I saw Defever live at the show I mentioned in the last review. A vanity project, sure, but that's what CDr labels are for. I almost decided to toss this when I started listening to it, but the charming twee/Americana tracks are worthy enough to keep, and besides, what would I do with it?

Biota - 'Object Holder' (RéR)

In the mid-90s, no one could hear your screams. The musical side of the (now relegated to art duty) Mnemonists created this dense 70 minute mess of a prog/avant-pop album -- at a time when the rest of us were busy listening to the Smoking Popes. But it's no more comprehensible to me in 2009. Biota have an eclectic sound but I can reduce it to two elements: accordion and delay-affected percussion. Everything else is perfectly nice, but if you wanna know what makes Biota sound like Biota (and not like, say, Animal Collective), its those two elements. The squeezebox makes everything sound like European busking music to me, and it's hard to believe these people were in the American southwest. There are explicitly folk parts, like 'Idea for a Wagon', but those are the moments that actually bore me a bit. Sorry guys, but I'm raised on liking my folk music to be as raw and gritty as possible, and there's just too many rack effects here. But effects are the name of the game, often building everything into an unintelligible chaos. The opening cut, 'Bumpreader', is about 9 minutes of everything you can get from the album, like an overhead view before zooming in for deeper inspection. There's confusing arrays of horns, acoustics, and studio fuckery to mix everything into a deep soup. This is a highly compositional approach to music, as strong melodies and chord changes are emphatic, though the presentation is somewhat obfuscated. But once Susanne Lewis starts singing, about seven tracks in with 'Reckoning falls', it takes a future-pop angle. While Biota have no problem recording their drums through chorus and delay, or recording their flügelhorn through shit-tons of reverb, they leave her voice coherently articulate. This works though - they understand the pop knife that has to cut through the sac of effects - and a strange beauty rings out on these songs. The downside is that I tend to privilege these pop tunes over the instrumental jams, which make up most of the disc. The lyrics are abstract yet evocative - sometimes about Uri Geller ('Reckoning falls') and sometimes the description of a surreal journey ('Private wire'). 'Signal's vocal part follows a tinny acoustic-electric guitar riff, the real sound of adult-alternative radio except the resulting monolith is too weird to stand a chance. There are a few placid piano instrumentals that seem to break the record into three parts, of which the third part's songs are all written by Chris Cutler. 'Coat' is an almost wonderfully sing-song melody about borrowing a coat, with fluttering percussion underneath that is distracting. The theatre of the everyday, but with flanger on the drums! 'The Trunk' closes things out with a fairly aggro moment and then there's an unlabeled bonus track -- as if the first 23 weren't enough! -- and to be honest, I don't know that I ever made it this far before. The artwork is as awkwardly out-of-place as the music, being drenched in psychedelic pastels, computer generated art, and the general vibe of early 90s Residents CD-ROM experiments. Yet the sounds within are 'interesting', occasionaly fascinating, and thus this has a space on my shelves.