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Re: Cooperation:
Transatlantic Collaboration
When I first began to really listen to this disc, I had little information on TransCollaboration or the men behind the album Re:Cooperation. In order to gain a more informed appreciation of the methods and efforts behind the production of this album, I turned to the expert journalistic skills I had finely honed at a nationally respected Washington, D.C. publication, and began an extensive search using the most fruitful of all information services, Google. My search was immediately productive, as the first result I saw read, Did you mean to search for: Re: Transculturation. While the artists behind this release did draw from a wide selection of cross-cultural musical influences, making this result almost apt, it wasnt what I needed, so I continued on. What I eventually found was that this album is the end result of nearly five years of trans-Atlantic collaboration between James Sidlo of America and David Cooper Orton of Wales. Both men shared an interest in recording and composition techniques involving sample looping and manipulation, and got together originally on an internet newsgroup devoted to this topic. This musical long-distance partnership eventually resulted in the production of this release, Re:Cooperation. It is overall a successful release, and is solid throughout, with moments of real beauty.The actual sound of Re:Cooperation is a mix of looped electronic and acoustic sound sources. The strength of each song is obviously dependent on how well the loops are blended and how well their different elements come together as a whole. More often than not, this is carried out with obvious mastery and occasionally with powerful results. There are striking moments on this album where the individual elements, having been suddenly added to the mix, result in a full and complete sound. I am partial to the songs of the first and last groups. That is, the first three tracks: Thing 2, Thing 3, and Thing 4 and the last two: Never Enough Part One and Never Enough Part Two. The Things are a straight ambient work following the traditions of the greats, but with enough of TransCollaborations own successes that it transcends the shadow of Eno and the others, managing to stand on its own as very solid and original work. The Never Enough songs are a mix of upbeat drumming in the krautrock motorik tradition of Neu! and some soft, pitch-shifting harmonic lines. Between both of these sets is a good mix of styles and sounds that sets these guys apart from the all the bedroom laptop-jockeys popping in and out of the spotlight these days. My one nitpick is a very personal one. In my own knob-twiddling experimentation, I have always struggled with good cymbal sounds. Even when playing live or sampling live drums, I have incredible trouble finding satisfying sounds that have the timbre and fullness that I want. Because of this, I always pay special attention to the high-end drum sounds of albums I know to contain electronic elements or were composed with electronic means. There are times on this album when I was bothered by the cymbal hits used throughout the songs. They sounded far thinner than the rest of the rich tones and seemed to me somehow out of place, even when occurring in parts of the compositions that were obviously set up for a hit. Still, it is not a problem that ultimately spoiled any of my enjoyment of this fine disc, and I heartily recommend the album to anyone interested in loop or ambient music.
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