TTW#26 - Goldmann vs Fennesz - Remiksz
Cassette only - limited edition of 250 copies
SOLD OUT
Two tracks, 60 minutes
Illustration: Hau/Viet Hoa Le
This is a remix of Fennesz's “Szampler” cassette, created by Stefan Goldmann erasing Christian Fennesz's original samples one by one and replacing them with corresponding samples of his own, made between 1999-2010 for his Akai S5000 sampler, in the same sequence. As a result, this cassette contains no sounds whatsoever from Fennesz's original.
While “Szampler” was a journey through Christian Fennesz's own sample collection, Stefan Goldmann structured his own sound archive around the layout of “Szampler”, replacing it all sound by sound. The result is a dialogue of the sonic atoms that built the works of two of today's most challenging musical minds. And a first ever glimpse behind the curtains - a full anatomy of sound, more revealing than any interview on “how it was done.”
www.stefangoldmann.com
www.fennesz.com
Reviews
Boomkat (UK):
**Cassette only. Limited to 250 copies** The Tapeworm label presents a “hard drive dialogue” between Christian Fennesz and Stefan Goldmann. “Remiksz” is a result of Goldmann erasing the samples used on Fennesz's “Szampler” piece-by-piece and replacing them with samples from his own collection of sounds made between 1999-2010 for his Akai S5000 sampler, in the same sequence. The final product bears no resemblance to Fennesz's original other than structure, essentially like dismantling and rebuilding a house by replacing one brick at a time. this manifests itself as constantly morphing and totally unpredictable display of highly organised sounds, ranging from distorted pneumatic drilling to blurts of avant-jazz, interjections of FM static and all manner of musique concrete streamed as a barrage of totally abstract sound and texture. That may sound like a nightmare to some, but it's actually an utterly fascinating experience, especially when you reach the mid section of stray boogie and electro riffs and reclaimed machine beats. If you're after a completely unpredictable and enveloping experience, look no further.
Aquarius Records (US):
Another weird and wonderful release from the mysterious Tapeworm label. “What's so weird and wonderful and mysterious about someone remixing Fennesz?” you might be wondering? Well on Remiksz, Stefan Goldmann makes use of Fennesz's previous Tapeworm release, the collection of samples appropriately titled Szampler, which gathered up various source material used to create some of our favorite Fennesz records and then wove those raw samples into a surprisingly cohesive whole. With Remiksz, things get pretty meta, with Goldmann removing Fennesz's original samples, one by one, replacing them with samples of his own, recorded and created over the last decade, in the same sequence, eventually resulting in this, Remiksz, a sort-of remix record, which contains absolutely NO music by Fennesz. Instead, Goldmann has composed a record using Fennesz' Szampler as a template, or a framework: the track durations are all the same, all the arrangements, it's just the sounds that are utterly and completely different. We guess one could argue that it therefore does incorporate MUSIC (in the sense of organization/structure) “written” by Fennesz, but just not his SOUNDS.
So Fennesz fans at first might be a bit puzzled, or disappointed, which definitely seems fair, but give it a chance, Goldmann has a fantastic arsenal of sounds and samples, many of them quite reminiscent of Fennesz himself, and like Szampler, Remiksz ends up being a deliriously varied barrage of tripped out psychedelic soundscapery, tendrils of buzzing guitar, dense staticky rumbles, orchestral bursts, little bits of melody, long shimmery drones, swirls of crackly haze, and blown out gauze, delicately drifting harmonics, dark ominous piano, cinematic strings, fields of celestial glitch and burnt black squelch, skittery fragmented rhythms, buried samples, cricket-like clicks, lots of reverb and washed out echo, warped and warbly tape experiments, primitive synths, a blurred and ever shifting short attention span sprawl of fractured lush loveliness and glitched out sampledelic sputter. Awesome.
The Wire (UK):
What Remiksz is: an exercise in “hard-drive dialogue” between Christian Fennesz and Stefan Goldmann. Remiksz follows a previous Tapeworm release, Szampler, in which Fennesz stitched together a series of samples from a collection amassed over more than a decade of laptop sound manipulations. Goldmann replaces every single one of Fennesz's samples from that piece, so that the end result consists entirely of his own personally sourced sounds. In this sense it's a remix of Fennesz in the same way that working through Shakespeare's “Sonnet XIX” replacing every word might be a remix. Does this Borgesian exercise leave a trace element of the organising spirit of Fennesz's piece? Is it a meta-comment on the tenuous connection of so many remixes to the original?
What Remiksz is: a series of miniatures, strung together like jewels on a necklace. A high-speed flick through a scrapbook in which speaker-shredding static is succeeded by ghostly absence and then klaxons of distortion. Eight seconds of static; ten seconds of sinister machinoid exhalations.
Experiments begun and discarded by some post-millennial Radiophonic Workshop. A roulette-wheel spin through a radio dial in which most stations are playing musique concrète - but a booming electro groove could click into place at any time. A post-sampling Faust Tape; an utterly absorbing soundworld. [Sam Davies]
