A meta remix EP (certainly a first for Trensmat) this gathers two duos - AnD and WHOK - each turning out an interpretation of a track from Valved's Blood On The Controls, a tape released in January on Trensmat sister label Nute. Both artists then remixed their own remixes so what we have are two sides of progressively mangled Valved action. With the facts out of the way, let's move to the less fact-reliant flight of fancy:
AnD side-step the main room and turn up the weird in the basement on their versions of the track Tipping Point. Their opener - the Tipped Over The Edge remix - is pure horrorshow. Think the audio equivalent of a long-gestating and thrillingly inevitable nervous meltdown, condensed neatly into five and a half minutes (for your convenience). Occasional barmy swoops of wobbly synth are the nearest thing to light relief in this swarm of evil morse code and broken digital chatter bubbling up from an impossibly thick migraine flavoured drone-soup.
As the title indeed suggests, the picture is more focused on the Tipped Over The Edge and Back Again remix. The morse code is upstaged by thunderous rolls of distorted kicks, augmented by a backing choir of slightly less chaotic rhythmic sound loops and a more muted sustained tonal gloop as a binding force. But there's that upsetting wobble of synth flashback again - the road to recovery is clearly going to have a few more potholes.
Whirling Hall Of Knives keep the ball trajectory well curved on the B, firstly with the reckless banging abandon of remix#1. A pummelling and brutally unsophisticated kick/hat combo underpin a cut up, unholy distortion of the already distorted bass throb from the original Blood On The Controls. Muffled and elongated mid-range ghosts dance with intermittent high-end wisps and the scantest hint of a looped melody struggles for air in the middle distance. A sharp and trebly percussive hailstone shower increases the intensity until the growling bass tones decide to eat almost everything in sight - end of story, needless to say.
The careful distillation of the preceding number results somewhat unexpectedly in the stuttering, stroberific closer, remix#2. Barely-there echos of remix#1 are suppressed by an upfront fluttering effect, some subtle spectral shimmer, and deep-rooted subterranean pulses feeding into shoots of rippled artificial percussion on the surface.
The remix hits a new low. Valved was unavailable for comment.
The digital download also contains the original versions of the tracks remixed here - 'Blood On The Controls' & 'Tipping Point'.
VERY limited edition 4 track vinyl EP in colour card sleeve (+ 6 downloads).
supported by 5 fans who also own “AnD / WHOK Remixes”
I don't know what I love more about Whirling Hall Of Knives (named ... well nearly ... after a Butthole Surfers track and that's a plus in anyone's CV); their utterly anarchic, fuck you approach to making techno or the fact that said techno is parsecs in quality away from the migraine-inducing, identikit thud 'n' distortion tripe that so many producers working in roughly the same area produce. Another favourite of mine, Container releases an album a year and you know before you press play on your iPod that it will be loud, vicious and maybe even a touch sadistic, but in a way that undoubtedly has the gene for wild enjoyability written into its DNA. Though their sounds are a good distance apart (with the similarly lauded Container, it's all about the power of the kick drum and what fun can be had with the manipulation of its timbre, etc when its heaviness is ramped up to concrete splitting levels. WHAK are arch-distortionists, splattering their grainy, punked-up techno with an eye-watering battery of talons down a blackboard sonic astringency, each track a misfiring maniac-driven jalopy that seems likely to explode at any moment. I've played "Decate" to death since I got it and it also begs the question, why am I so addicted to music that punishes more than it entertains. I suppose it's for the same reason that the gorier a slasher flick, the bigger its cinema audience and why, despite being the poor being criminalised and having the indignity of visiting food banks to stop their children from starving forced upon them, some working class people still see fit to vote Conservative. Anyway, polemic over, listening to "Decate" offers that rare mincing your head in a caterer's blender without the need for hiring a cleaning team to exsanguinate the carpets and remove fragments of your skull from the woodchip experience you should submit to least once in your life; in my case once a day for at least a fortnight. Storming. Nic Brown