Ricardo Villalobos / Max Loderbauer – Re: ECM

sound great , i need vinyl please @ ECM !!

Sounds amazing. Very much on the outside though. Would've loved some inside too.

For a dj/producer to pull themmselves off the dancefloor as a physical space and its resultant atmospherics and mental gymnastics and into the dance floor as a purely mental space and the sound as its physical, and architectural atmosphere. Isn't that a bit indulgent? Perhaps. But. Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer are most certainly up to the task. That is perhaps where to start with as an arrival point in listening to this expansive gaze at portions and departure points from within a dive into the ECM back catalog. Pairing Villalobos with Loderbauer is a musical friendship that probably shouldn't surprise too many, and it is one that promises to open a potential for many intersections of electronic music to merge and blend into new territories. For a quick history. Thank Uwe Schmidt.
If you come into this with the expectation of it being another Odd Machine, and to able to use for a dj tool for the particularly refined, yet free, yet deep and psychedelic set and setting. You are only partially right. And it is a really small partially.
Perhaps, this is the effort Ricardo Villalobos has mentioned as his breaking point with electronic music as being that of solely a strictly functional and body based music. In that regard, listening to it for those frissures where rhythm and tempo is left behind. It doesn't ever truly break out of the pulse and get sent off to be free to roam as pure aural texture NO free range. This is sheer textural cuisine. But, Villalobos pined "If one combines the functionality of reduced electronic structures with the living textures ... it ignites new passions on a subliminal level... The most important thing is to harmonize these two worlds, without them aspiring to mutually deactivate each other, to keep both–the organic and the electronic–in balance." To listen into the album. It is still finding its roots in the march of the dancers drum, and the sequential and cyclic. That said. It takes on the funerary march, and some of its jazz.
As an album marking Villalobos growth into an album artist of listener music and one who moves outside of the dancefloor space. It is deeply rewarding in pockets. It also shows there is room for much growth. The pieces sometimes arrive at what feels like a resolution and they end satisfied. But overall, With Villalobos predilection for drawing out the groove into ports and channels unknown and very strange, the ideas inside the pieces sometimes do not really develop very much outside of there being a singular groove and it sorting itself out and falling in and out of step through a varying degree of intricate and deft application of effects and processing inside of impeccable programming, and sequencing. I.e. It's villalobos and loderbauer at their best sans a four on the floor kick clap sequence to engage the body with. For the most part the album does still retain the track and toolbox quality a dj seeks. Inside of this, and Villalobos prowess as a dance floor producer with an ear towards percussion driven by a psychedelic sense of place, and application of function of emotion and expansion via an ecstatic release driven by a political response of wtf? The well timed application into a dance floor oriented set and setting and weaving of some of these pieces would elevate the dedicated into places unknown, and indeed, very wild.

This also wouldn't sound out of place on an American label. Like say. Thrill Jockey. The quite often brittle treatment of the sounds. The listen at low volume and from another room treatment of the bristling texture of his percussion and space really has it in for fans of Tortoise, O'Rourke, or Oval.
As a track by track breakdown. Reblop (the first) is interlude art film music. The sound of a tinkling piano and lute caressing a windowsill while a faucet drips in the background. Retimeless is a one for the pile of that track. it's quirky and oozes proudly into and out of focus. Reannounce is pure party in the woods with the Tar and the Rhythm Devils Re-emergence is difficult jazz. Brooding, and the half the sound comes off as recording through a broken cone that still has the sneezes. Soundtrack and smokey. But still bristling and very volatile. There is a cast off nature where the sound kind of caves in over itself in this that is not unlike Flanger or Schnittstelle. Rensenada renders a very broken beat underneath Bernie Maupins Jewel of the Lotus. This one is touch and go for me, cos I know Jewel of the Lotus from how Harold Budd interpreted it. As a listener I have a hard time with it. The rhythm doesn't feel its sway to how the flow of the melody wants it to. Making it a listen where it might amount to an unfortunate case of some rather admirable efforts in programming and sequencing amounting to mere busy work.
Recurrence is another smokey number that comes in and out of focus and provides you a midget in every corner. It revisits a theme that also fades and recedes through out the album. The funerary march and the dance. Reshadub is a series of drum spasms falling in space. The musical equivalent of being pushed down a hill and told to play taps and a track which serves as a good example of both Villalobos strengths and his weaknesses as a producer. Requote mills about in that slightly academic and sometimes uncomfortable space of classical influenced jazz. Rebird finds an interlude to wend its way into being. It bobs in the water as a gentle foreshadowing and begs for a visual to be able to soundtrack and a story to become a part of. Retikhiy comes off as apocalyptic, like one is traveling a great distance through the jungle and up the river to meet a man.
Recat parades itself through on a riding cymbal with a snare and kick before running itself out and breaking apart into the background. Resvete is spooky vocal soundtrack sexual energy something or other music. Reblazhenstva is soundtrack music par excellance.
Since the album drapes itself over 2 hours. This is not really an album for exuberance and active listening, unless you're up for the task. Put it back in the background and let it flow. In an active setting, It does bear to be broken down into various packets of a more random listening and to involve itself within a context where the music as it works can function against another background, and other sounds. It's a soundtrack without a movie.