From Mark Stevens Sent Sun, May 30th 1999, 22:00
From Mark Stevens Sent Sun, May 30th 1999, 22:00
======== Funkstorung volume 2 / issue 17 / david hemmingway / 03.04.99 With the most obtuse of remixes for icons as diverse as Bjork and the Wu-Tang Clan, the crystalline ambience of these two teutons is poised to invade the sonic shores of the UK. Sleaze Nation creates them some lebensraum. With the acutest attention to detail, German duo Funkstorung excavate electronica's prettiest of melodies and merge these with flickering, debilitated beats to create some of the late 90s' most evocative music. Michael Fakesch and Chris Luca are probably best known for their radical redesign of Bjork's 'All Is Full of Love' which reinvigorated the final track on her last LP with glacial Autechrhythms and a scattering of astringent beats; but Funkstorung's own painstaking recordings for the Compost and Musik aus Strom labels are equally beguiling. Tellingly, the duo derive their name from the German for radio interference and their (Designers Republic-created) logo is an abstracted version of Deutsche Telekom's warning sign for the phenomenon. Funkstorung's music builds on such sonic glitches and unplaceable sounds to become oddly affecting: in the curt electronic clicks and the crackles of static in tracks like InMarSat and Telekom Direkt, I hear some of this closing century's most touching and resonant sounds. "It's a big compliment if you see our music as emotionally resonant," says Fakesch. "We love nice melodies -- you might see 'melancholic' or 'sad' but for us they are just 'nice'. We love that combination or controversy of hard or highly structured beats with emotional melodies." "We fight for this kind of music as we believe in it but we don't have a kind of philosophy behind it. It's all about fan." Stating the obvious, Funkstorung are Autechre fans. "What we like the most about Autechre are the brilliant melodies in combination with superb beats and extremely intense sounds. Amber and Tri Repetae are our all-fave records." (Their current listening includes Lexauncuplt, Andre Estermann, Massive Attack, Eminem. "The Depeche Mode 'Best Of' is cool too," they concede.) The duo have collaborated with the oft Autechre-associated label Skam on a prematurely aborted series of scarcely available releases under the anagramatic Mask moniker (compiling unidentified tracks by the likes of Boards of Canada, Bola, Jega and Push Button Objects) as well as releasing records via their own Musik aus Strom imprint: "Our main intention was to release our own stuff as fast as possible without having all the trouble with other labels: sending out demos, fucking around with contract shit or waiting for extremely long times for the record to be released. At the time there was only Warp which did this kind of music. We still use MAS as a platform to release music we really love. We've never made any money from it. It was good promotion for us and we got to meet a lot of cool people through the label like Andre Estermann, Freeform and Electric Sheep." The duo have just released Additional Productions, a handy archive comp of their best remixes and reinterpretations (plus a new collaboration with DJ Craze) that demonstrates the Fakesch/Luca aesthetic as applied to other people's music or -- as they put it -- "exterior productions put through the Funkstorung audio process." "All we did in 1998 was remix other people," they explain simply. "We didn't want to have all our remixes spread all over the world on different labels." With a reconstruction of East Flatbush Project's Tried by Twelve (originally featured on last year's best 12 inch, that drew on the remixing skill of Autechre, Freeform, Phoenecia and others), the duo pick up on the common threads shared between hip-hop and experimental electronica. Even better, on a Wu-Tang Clan remix, an absurdly pretty and soulful voice sings "it's Wu muthafucka/Wu-Tang muthafucka" over trademark Funkstorung beats and Arctic melodies. Building on the duo's new-found desire to experiment with the human voice, threats are warped, sped-up and slowed down, manipulated against rapid, staccato beats. "We are getting more and more into cool hip hop stuff," they reveal. "We love cool beats and raps but what could be better is the sound and beat-programming: that's what we tried to improve. We took the best of the two genres and mixed it together but we are still a lot more electronica than hip-hop." Additional Products also re-exposes the first of their duo of Bjork remixes -- another has appear on Fat Cat's past/present/future sampler Across Uneven Terrain. All Is Full of Love is dissected and recreated in a flurry of pneumatic clicks, whirs and abstract beats to become an apex of electronic melancholia. They now plan to utilize more vocals in their work. "Bjork and Massive Attack aside, we never liked voices too much. A very magic moment was when we did the Bjork remix. We did our beats first and then we added her voice... Hell! It was brilliant! We never thought it would be that great. We began to search for a singer and have finally found a great woman who is totally into our music. She sings in her own freestyle language, a little like Latin and English mixed together, and absolutely fits with our music. It makes our music even more special. We're going to record two or three tracks with her and one with a rapper for our forthcoming album. If you like Additional Products, you'll love our album. There are better sounds, greater beats, more details, one hundred percent Funkstorung!" Additional Productions comes with this year's best packaging. The sleeve unfolds to reveal the 'Funkstorung Aesthetic Standards Manual. Specifications for the integrations of the Funkstorung aesthetic into the global marketplace': we are informed the acceptable variations of their logo, how this logo can be exploited on clothing and the precise typefaces and colours to be deployed in Funkstorung-related material. "The Designer's Republic 'invented' a corporate identity for Funkstorung. It is a super-funny idea which is also very cool. It's very important to have a) a brilliant design and b) your own design style, especially in a logo." World dominations awaits. ======== -- Mark Stevens http://www.sonance.demon.co.uk/