Artist Valved
Title Valved Remixes
Genre Techno
Label Trensmat
Catalog# TR044
Released 2014
MP3 Download Source WEB
Play Time 29:00 min
Total Tracks. 6
Bitrate 320 kbps
1. Tipping Point (AnD Tipped Over The Edge Remix) ( 5:32)
2. Tipping Point (AnD Tipped Over The Edge & Back Again Remix) ( 6:24)
3. Blood On The Controls (Whirling Hall Of Knives remix#1) ( 5:01)
4. Blood On The Controls (Whirling Hall Of Knives remix#2) ( 5:07)
5. Tipping Point ( 2:58)
6. Blood On The Controls ( 3:58)
Total Playtime: 29:00 min
A meta remix EP (certainly a first for Trensmat) this gathers two duos – AnD and WHOK – each turning out an interpretation of a track from Valved’s Blood On The Controls, a tape released in January on Trensmat sister label Nute. Both artists then remixed their own remixes so what we have are two sides of progressively mangled Valved action. With the facts out of the way, let’s move to the less fact-reliant flight of fancy:
AnD side-step the main room and turn up the weird in the basement on their versions of the track Tipping Point. Their opener – the Tipped Over The Edge remix – is pure horrorshow. Think the audio equivalent of a long-gestating and thrillingly inevitable nervous meltdown, condensed neatly into five and a half minutes (for your convenience). Occasional barmy swoops of wobbly synth are the nearest thing to light relief in this swarm of evil morse code and broken digital chatter bubbling up from an impossibly thick migraine flavoured drone-soup.
As the title indeed suggests, the picture is more focused on the Tipped Over The Edge and Back Again remix. The morse code is upstaged by thunderous rolls of distorted kicks, augmented by a backing choir of slightly less chaotic rhythmic sound loops and a more muted sustained tonal gloop as a binding force. But there’s that upsetting wobble of synth flashback again – the road to recovery is clearly going to have a few more potholes.
Whirling Hall Of Knives keep the ball trajectory well curved on the B, firstly with the reckless banging abandon of remix#1. A pummelling and brutally unsophisticated kick/hat combo underpin a cut up, unholy distortion of the already distorted bass throb from the original Blood On The Controls. Muffled and elongated mid-range ghosts dance with intermittent high-end wisps and the scantest hint of a looped melody struggles for air in the middle distance. A sharp and trebly percussive hailstone shower increases the intensity until the growling bass tones decide to eat almost everything in sight – end of story, needless to say.
The careful distillation of the preceding number results somewhat unexpectedly in the stuttering, stroberific closer, remix#2. Barely-there echos of remix#1 are suppressed by an upfront fluttering effect, some subtle spectral shimmer, and deep-rooted subterranean pulses feeding into shoots of rippled artificial percussion on the surface.
