Carl Craig & Moritz Von Oswald
Recomposed: Maurice Ravel & Modest Mussorgsky
Deutsche Grammophone, 2008 | buy it
How often do you play Manuel Gottsching’s E2-E4, Brian Eno’s Discreet Music, or Ricardo Villalobos’ Minimoonstar? Long songs are strange creatures that often dissolve into background noise. At their best, however, they teach us to listen in a new way, forcing us to consider music beyond the limits initially established by the physical constraints of a record. The third installment of Deutsch Grammophone’s Recomposed series offers a gripping premise: Carl Craig and Moritz Von Oswald, arguably the two most important names in techno, reconstruct Maurice Ravel’s 1912 landmark ‘Boléro’ and Modest Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’, originally composed in 1874. Given the pedigree of this record, one expects nothing less than a new window onto twentieth-century music.

Recomposed begins with pure drift as a few thick chords unfurl like an old Eno track before a military tattoo slowly surfaces. The drummer boy rhythm bangs on for awhile, bracing for a fight before drifting away. It is an awkward and ambitious piece of music that will either drive you batty or sound absolutely brilliant, depending on your mood.

When the techno drums finally kick in after sixteen minutes, the pay-off is big: the brass section breaks apart and a few satisfying blasts of Chain Reaction dub-tones blurt across a tight web of delayed high hats. The next fifteen minutes remind you that you are, in fact, dealing with the Paperclip People guy and the Basic Channel guy. The classical affectations disappear; it’s all filtered drums and synthesizers that grind like buzzsaws. Around the midway point, the rhythm decays into another stretch of ambient weather, a gorgeous series of delicate and pulsing drones – until a heavy brass explosion ushers in another section of frantic chamber music complete with nervous woodwinds and crashing piano keys. As it locks into another beat and the brass and wood instruments morph into looping electronic signals, a few thoughts kick in:

1. This is not a one-hour piece, but rather a mix of six ten-minute tracks: classical + techno + classical + techno + classical + techno. Just saying.

2. Carl Craig and Mortiz Von Oswald were always brilliant and tackling nineteenth century chamber music reconfirms this. Despite the uneven results, there are some breathtaking moments here that few others could pull off.

3. Blending techno and electronic music is instructive: both forms use the same mechanisms of composition, share the similar aesthetic sensibilities, and often remove the personal touch (what the art world likes to call “facture”). For a rousing debate on the matter, check out Infinite State Machine.

4. However, perhaps it’s best to keep the genres separated. Shuttling between the concert hall and the dancefloor gets exhausting.

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Carl Craig & Moritz Von Oswald – Movement 3 (Excerpt)

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Carl Craig & Moritz Von Oswald – Interlude

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Carl Craig & Moritz Von Oswald – Movement 6 (Excerpt)