Random Review Week #1- Carl Craig & Moritz von Oswald- ReComposed

Deutsche Grammophon, 2008

 

We kick off Random Review Week with a risky concept: Take two techno icons from Detroit and Berlin respectively and let them remix Ravel's “Bolero” and Mussorgsky's “Pictures at an Exhibition,” two classical works ubiquitous enough to have become cliches. With a premise like that, it's easy to make a lame novelty record where a couple string themes you've probably heard in at least 5 car commercials get the four-on-the-floor bassdrum treatment.

Thankfully, that's not what “ReComposed” is, but despite the general tastefulness and musical competence on display, it's all a bit on the safe side. The name of the game here is ambient-leaning techno more geared towards home listening than club use. It's almost exactly what you'd expect from a Moritz von Oswald / Carl Craig collab too. Both the former's trademark use of delay and reverb and the latter's taste for warm melodies are in full effect, but the use of the source material is often a bit superfluous, particularly on the “Bolero” half of the album which lasts from tracks 1 to 5.

Over the course of 32 minutes the music slowly moves from warm synth drones reminiscent of krautrockers like Cluster and Harmonia to dubbed-out horn samples and marching snare drums. And then, just when things are about to get interesting, it turns into something that appears to contain no samples at all and sounds like a track from Moritz von Oswald's 90s dub techno duo Basic Channel, complete with wavering, synthscapes and filtered kickdrums. The remaining 3 tracks focus on “Pictures at an Exhibition.” “Movement 5” unfortunately sounds a kinda “strings plus techno beat” thing talked about earlier in places, but the closing 14-minute “Movement 6” is the album's strongest point. A reggae-like shaker-and-bongo rhythm(!) is enveloped in a gauze of manipulated samples and spacy synthetic swooshes. It's an odd combination, but it works well and uses the source material in an unexpected way instead of casting it aside

“ReComposed” is a well-crafted and enjoyable album from two towering figures in electronic dance music, but as a techno-meets-classical experiment, it's kind of a disappointment.