Christian Marclay/Otomo Yoshihide
Moving Parts
Asphodel
Moving Parts represents the clash of two turntable titans. Marclay has been involved in avant-garde turntablism since the late seventies, while Yoshihide is becoming an institution within himself. While the music on this record is excellent, it doesn’t represent the direction of Yoshihide’s recent work. There are touches of the sine wave experimentation that he’s pursued more heavily, but he’s abandoned much of this sort of turntable bombast with the dissolving of his Ground-Zero project. Regardless, it’s quite a matchup. Marclay brings lots of recognizable references and musical sound bits to the mix, while Yoshihide focuses on texture and more stretched out sound treatments. The rapport between the two is great, and the ideas tossed back and forth are numerous considering the sound sources. When someone brings up the orchestra in “Elephant Memories,” the other responds with overpowering waves of timpani (?) There isn’t a lot of room for subtlety with these masses of sound, but both musicians create a work that’s fairly straightforward (for what it is, mind you) and consistently interesting.
Asphodel, 763 Brannan Street, San Francisco, CA 94103; http://www.asphodel.com
