Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Review: Dead Edits Present Stefan Weisser’s Editeditions & Contexts: A Forgery (lathe cut, CDR, visual/textual supplements)


Frans de Waard wrote a very thorough and kind review of this release in the Dec. 8 2015 Vital Weekly.

Extract below, full review at Vital Weekly: http://www.vitalweekly.net/1010.html

"Before I started to play this, I took out the original 7" (which as a true Z'EV fan I have!) and played that again, albeit only at 33 rpm (one can play this at any speed). Voices rotate in loops along with sounds of bottles being smashed and other sounds. Quite hypnotic music but it is not without variation. A fine record, but not something I would easily pick out to rework. Dead Edits, however, did.
For the lathe cut version, Edwards recorded the music from unamplified copy by placing a microcassette close to the needle; just that, but also picking up any other sound from the room, motors, and assorted other noise. All of this remains very quiet and one cannot recognize the original easily.
The CDR has much more audible pieces and here Dead Edits apply their more 'usual' process of playing their music in all sorts of strange manners, picking the sound from small speakers, lo-fi Dictaphones, cutting up mixes, adding their own voices and a constant cut-up. Unlike the original, which is very looping based, the music here is not entirely loop based. It's of course there, but the voice of Lunde plays an important role and effectively creates more poetry, in new contexts.
There is some excellent variation in these nine pieces, ranging from pure sound poetry to industrial loops and all of that in the best lo-fi musique concrete tradition—just as one would expect from Dead Edits.
An excellent release: much food for thought."