Sunday 21 April 2013

Listening: 13 April 2013 - Mille Plateaux


I came of age with Mille Plateaux, discovering it as a recently converted former electrophobe, turned on through the usual club means, but craving an exploratory angle I'd missed through the indie-alt-country twee I'd hitherto enjoyed and the banging UK Hard House I'd been introduced to (and didn't much care for). Mille Plateaux, and their functional brethren Force Inc and Force Tracks, did the trick, bringing invention, rhetoric and experimentalism to the - for me - new field of electronic and dance music.


I was going to write more on this but no time, so will stick to what I've recently revisited. None of this fueled by a specific nostalgia, but somehow was curious to hear how Random Inc's Walking In Jerusalem sounded. It was one of the late Mille Plateaux releases I never properly heard, also coincidentally among the first records I bought through the internet. Could be a factor, lacking the in-person connection of buying in real shops (a petty plug for Saturday's Record Store Day). Anyways, its patchy now but by no means irrevocably dated, couple of pretty good tracks which could work in today's deep house environment. Walking In Jerusalem was released in two versions, I got the more rhythmic vinyl but there was the more abstract CD release (which I've never heard), with some cross over but generally distinct tracks and agenda. (This multiple versions-multiple aims release strategy seems to be quite unique, and doesn't happen much today.)

Only audio link to it I could find available is this, using a track I can only assume is CD only as I don't have it, for a video I know nothing about:



The vinyl release comprises mixes of sorts, each track titled 'Random Inc meets...' so and so '... in ...', location in Jerusalem, based around wherever Random Inc's Sebastien Meissner did the field recording. Collaborators are mostly the glitch-Microhouse artists of the day, of which the 'Random_Inc Meets Anton Kubikov @ Moscovia' track is pretty good, a glitched up version of Kubikov's 'Erusalem' off his Move Your Body Boogie' EP on the forgotten Freizeitglaubben label.



That track is now credited to SCSI-9:



Also great is 'Random_Inc Meets Greenhouse Fx @ King David', but of Greenhouse FX there is nada.

So it's an internet void for listening to Walking in Jerusalem aside from unhelpful Last FM links, like much of the lesser glitch bulk of the day. Random Inc's Sebastian Meissner does more as Klimek these days but not since 2009's Movies is Magic (which was magic).

Also DLed and listened to Vladislav Delay's Entain. I'd only had it on a copied Mini Disk before but its worth hearing again; like all V Delay's work it holds up. Mournful dubby trails with trademark bass pulses. Youtube is kind:



Something of Slowdive's Souvlaki in this:


Now have a hankering to hear Tim Hecker's Jetone album again, something I dig out more often than most Mille Plateaux releases. I've spoken before of my boredom with Hecker's own-name work, even the acclaimed Ravedeath and Piano Drop were mere updates on a decade-old sound, good as that is. Now he's touring with Oneohtrix Point Never which would be fun...:


... But I'd like to hear him revisit rhythms:






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