>> Dzihan & Kamien
bio: The first time I finished hearing the collection you now hold in your hand, it made me ask a question that I'd never had reason to consider before: ?Where exactly is that 'repeat' function on my cd-player??...
As I rushed to find out, the looped remix heaven of the first cd returned. A place where the Couch records label founders can be found diving deep into the realm of thoughts and pictures. Each provided sample is placed into a carefully studied new equilibrium to a level where sounds give up their individual lives for the creation of integer atmospheric units. Mixing like drops of water in a river stream.
They flooded my space, but who could ever regret? The hips were swinging in the flood, but to hell with hips when there's so much more to it anyway! A sad note that somehow made you happy or a happy one that miraculously takes you to a purifying meditation. Or that subliminal kind of progression that builds up its funk on a Xenakis-like randomness...
But don't approach it too rationally - you might just get lost. There are many strategies interacting with randomness here, much discipline and joy, much skill behind the childish playfulness - and all at once. Just absorb by your senses, and then you'll know that this flow is a new kind of place - clear, emotional and responsible. A perfect hideout from the dominant daily logic that all too often becomes predictible or even absurd. A logic that only provides us with functionally outlined hits which are lucky if they survive a couple of weeks on the dancefloor....
No, this flood belongs to it's own genre, the genre of self-generating sonic pleasure. So why not get wet completely? Yet, the real surprise is the second cd. A succesfully designed startegic shift made by the makers to let you understand the depth of their operational field. And at the same time a neat trick to make the two cd's match as a conceptual pearl: D&K tracks wrapped in vintage jazz clothing. No, you can not immediately recognize any of them, new arrangements have been explored and as a consequence we hear completely new tracks. By the means of exceptional improvisational skill and the balance of the 'Brut Imperial Quintet' we are wisked back to the glorious impro-jazz times. Respect to the old-skool, take your hat off, order a damn fine whiskey and dig the cool! Make-over art of a different kind.
Obviously, these guys know how the music works and that is their weapon. They know how to connect seperate pieces into coherent forms of a higher complexity. They should also know that their work is now forcing us to deal with notions such as 'canon', 'classic' and 'standard'. The quality and overal integrity of this collection of sonic make-overs makes it one of the few that can cut through the nonsense of 'fashion remixism'. A discreet declaration has been proclaimed: From now on the remix as a conformity of postmodern emptiness is dead. Remix as science lives on!
The choice to redo classics, such as Serge Gainsbourg's ?Je t`aime, ? moi non plus? or Billie Holiday's ?Don't Explain? - which dominated criteria within their genre for decades - is telling us something about the ease in which they can manipulate the norms, essentially to give their own take on what a 'classic' might be.
nothing's holy, but nothing should ever get damaged. rather upgraded on every level, taken into the unexpected domain. could be a new way of 'classic'
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