Various Artists
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reviews
Excellent explorative remix set
Georgia’s 2014 album, Like Comment, was packed with scatterbrained ideas, which makes it perfect remix material. In the usual mode of Belgian label Meakusma, this collection is both wildly imaginative and understated. The best contributions dig into the originals’ dense percussive grids, coming out with strange new rhythmic shapes. RVNG Intl. boss Matt Werth, on a rare production outing, betrays the influence of his label’s recent Savant reissue; his “Gone Fishin'” mix of “Abstract High” is machine-like post-punk of a similar stripe. PAN/Deepblak beatsmith Afrikan Sciences slips into the gaps between the grid on his deranged mix of “Mahbunzi Nahgo Pihndi Goes To The Market.” Its beat patterns zip past in gooey disarray, as if they’re half-finished specimens flying off a pottery wheel.
Elsewhere, things settle down a bit. New York’s Bryce Hackford turns in a carefree house version of “Nu-Way Heat,” the EP’s most straightforward pleasure. Rub-N-Tug’s Tom Of England, here under the guise Tom Of Georgia, pulls apart “Haya” to uncover a sparse, pensive loop piece. (Compared to its companions, the track’s arctic synths and thoughtful guitar noodling feel a bit tame.) Georgia themselves tie the whole thing together with two tracks of their own. The first “Bridge” is an off-colour synth number with lewd guitar twangs, and the second sounds like three Jan Garbarek records stacked onto one another. They’re fitting icing on an exceedingly strange cake.
Angus Finlayson
A fine bunch of remixers refract Georgia’s colourful, mulitfarious grooves for Belgium’s meakusma. Afrikan Sciences impresses most with a wonderfully chaotic, polymetric revision full of modular plongs, jazzy harmonics and clipped drums ranking among the best we’ve heard from the PAN artist, whilst RVNG Intl’s cut-up and hard-wired Gone Fishin’ Mix possibly betrays strong influence from Powell in the best way. Georgia also hold their own with a wry selection of discordant ‘Bridge’ tracks and the deliquescent, hyaline prisms of ‘Haya’, as reworked by Tom of Georgia.