People Like Us
Hate People Like Us
Soleilmoon
This is possibly the most postmodern idea for a CD that I’ve heard: remixes and interpretations of tracks that are made mostly out of sound recycled from old records. Remixes of Plunderphonia? Does it work? I give it a hearty yes. The names of some the remixers should be motivation enough to pick this up: Farmers Manual, Rehberg & Bauer, Stock Hausen & Walkman Coil, Negativland (surprised?), Boyd Rice, Death in June, Christoph Heeman, Mika Vanio and others. The powerbook people (Farmers Manual, Rehberg & Bauer) remix the tracks in their own way: toss raw sounds into digital blender, puree, and sample sound of blender. Mika Vanio contributes a track of eerie ambiance whose relation to the original leaves me baffled. Then again most everything People Like Us do leaves me baffled. Between every track there is a short snippet of sound culled from various sources. They serve more as compliments to the material than mere filler. If you enjoy your avant-garde music with a sense of humor, and you are wearing your John Oswald records out, check this out. But then again, “What’s Music”?
Soleilmoon, P.O. Box 83296, Portland, OR 97283; http://www.soleilmoon.com
