Bitcrush From Arcs To Embers CATMD178

This latest release from Mike Cadoo's Bitcrush project is a specially curated remix album comprised of re-workings of songs taken from all 5 of his albums as Bitcrush. Bersarin Quartett, Funckarma, Jatun, Near The Parenthesis, port-royal, Stripmall Architecture (Halou), SubtractiveLAD, Vanessa Van Basten, Winterlight, and Worm Is Green all re-imagine songs from the Bitcrush catalog. From Arcs to Embers is a remarkably fresh re-envisioning of the Bitcrush sound making it great for fans of his or any of the remixers' work. [Learn more about Bitcrush...]

Chroniques Electroniques

Nous connaissions les albums remixés, voici maintenant les discographies revisitées. Le concept nous vient des Etats-Unis, où Mike Cadoo a accepté de confier à une brochette d'artiste les cinq albums de son projet Bitcrush pour donner vie à de nouvelles versions. Le côté cathartique n'a pas disparu... il fait d'ailleurs le lien entre les époques et les producteurs qui ont surtout, selon l'auteur original, suivi l'esprit du dernier disque en date, Of Embers.

De 2004 à 2010, l'Américain a composé des morceaux mélangeant les influences rock, post-rock ou plus planantes utilisant selon les envies instruments et machines. A l'heure de les réinterpréter, les remixeurs ne se sont pas trop éloignés des paysages de départ. Entre post-rock (An Island A Penninsula (Swan(s) Lake mix par Vanessa Van Basten)), ambient (Every Sunday par Winterlight), dub (Bitcrush In Dub par Stripmall Architecture) ou abstract hip-hop (Untilted par Worm Is Green), l'univers froid et adapté aux grands espaces de Mike Cadoo est respecté, malgré ces styles divers qui n'ont jamais semblé aussi proches. Les fans de Sigur Ros ne seront pas déçus, avec cette même absence de frontière entre électronique et organique que chez les Islandais. A la différence tout de même que les titres sont plutôt instrumentaux, seules quelques voix faisant des apparitions fantomatiques par moment, sur Every Sunday ou Waiting For Something par exemple.

Chaque producteur prend tout son temps pour planer au-dessus de contrées sauvages, où la nature est prise au piège par les glaces. Le survol des lacs, à distance des montagnes, laisse un sentiment de liberté absolue. Les nappes caressent les tympans et aucun instrument ne semble vouloir déranger l'auditeur qui peut se laisser bercer, imaginant son propre voyage. Colder, revu par Funkarma, est plus sombre, comme si un danger surgissait dans ce rêve qui semblait solitaire. Là encore, les sonorités synthétiques côtoient sans difficulté des cordes fragiles dans une veine plus électronica. La relecture de Waiting For Something par Jatun annonce quant à elle un regain de puissance avec des guitares saturées enveloppantes. Mais c'est le The Days We Spent Within de Near The Parenthesis, également post-rock, qui apportera la meilleure balance entre l'énergie des lourds accords et la douceur du glockenspiel. Il est aisé de se laisser porter entre ces fines variations qui sont de nouvelles couleurs à un même environnement, comme des saisons qui se succèdent en quelques minutes, changeant notre rapport au temps.

Ces remixs offrent une belle occasion en cet été de s'échapper en fermant les yeux pour ceux qui sont restés à la ville et de donner une bande-son tranquille pour ceux qui sont en vacances... C'est également et surtout une bonne manière de prolonger l'expérience Bitcrush. headphone commute

Approaching a fourth entry in this installment of Sound Bytes, I realized that I’ll have to do this as a two-part series, as there are a few more albums from n5MD that I wish to cover. Rounding up this trip through emotional electronica and soaring shoegaze, it’s only appropriate that I return back to Bitcrush. And it seems that there are more than just a handful of musicians who are also fans of Mike Cadoo’s signature sound. Here’s to add a flavor of their own is a remix album, From Arcs To Embers, featuring reworks of tracks taken from all five of his previous albums. If you are a fan of Cadoo’s work and label alike, you’ll truly enjoy this collection of remixes from Jatun, Bersarin Quartett, port-royal, SubtractiveLAD, Near The Parenthesis, Funckarma and many others! Given a wide array of contributing artists, you can expect your favorite Bitcrush tracks reworked in soothing electronica, glitchy IDM and head-bopping downtempo genres. A few good surprises on here. A remix from Tim Ingham (aka Winterlight) of Every Sunday, a leftfield-shoegaze-dream-pop-ambient exploration, leaves me curious to hear more from this Thames Vallye (UK) based artist. Watch out for his debut on n5MD! And check out this remix of Colder by Funckarma! [sic]magazine

My love affair with the remix album was a fleeting thing. Stung by one betrayal after another, I practically withdrew from partaking. What are remixes for anyway? If a track is in need of some outside doctoring, what does that say about it? If it is already a classic, why bother?

Then again, some remixes are wonderful. I admit that. I just can’t help thinking that a whole albums worth of mixes, like covers, is tough to sustain. Two of the best examples in recent years have been port-royal’s Flared Up and Mogwai’s Kicking a Dead Pig. Indeed, both are valuable reference points here. However, unlike those two bands, (whose remix albums were centred on earlier work) Mike Cadoo has selected pieces from his whole Bitcrush output dating from the latest In Embers all the way back to 2004’s Enarc. (Hence the title, arcs to embers) And if the choice of material is important its significance fades in comparison to the key element, which is quite simply… who to give it to. Here Cadoo has rather excelled. From Arcs To Embers contains precious few of those crashing, confusing reconstructs yet plenty of the ‘beautiful companion piece’ variety.

Well chosen then, but equally well done. The mixers shuffle the pack, stamping their personality onto these pieces without stripping away Bitcrush’s own. At the beginning, both Winterlight’s ‘Every Sunday’ and Bersarin Quartett’s ‘Post’ radiate light like sunshine piercing through a cloudy sky. And man, do those clouds swirl! The effect is somehow original yet utterly in keeping with the parent tracks. Funckarma’s ‘Colder’ is probably the harshest mix on offer whilst Vanessa Van Bastens ‘An Island, A Penninsula’ is arguably the most transformed, although Stripmall Architecture must have a shout themselves with their excellent ‘Bitcrush in Dub’.

Three label mates, Near The Parenthesis, port-royal and SubtractiveLAD close the album in superb style. The royals possibly deserve special mention if only for their sheer restraint, managing to reign in a good deal of their trademark echoes and thereby avoiding the complete transformation ‘Of Embers’ into a port-royal track. Then again SubLAD’s reworked ‘Of Days’ is panoramic both in scope and splendour.

As a non-proper studio release album, From Arcs To Embers is about as far from any completist, ‘cash-in’ as it is possible to get. As an introductory point for new fans it works, whilst exisiting followers of both the remixers and their subject will be more than pleased with this offering. As an album though, FATE feels like a Bitcrush record. Because it is, simply. Reason alone to get it. cyclic defrost

Mike Cadoo spent most of a decade in the IDM duo Gridlock before starting the solo venture Bitcrush to explore his resurgent fondness for live instrumentation, vocals, and shoegaze textures. Since then he has released five albums, from the 2004 debut Enarc to this year’s more ambient Of Embers. Songs from each are reinterpreted on this collection – thus its title. Not having heard any of the originals, there’s no way for me to know where Cadoo’s work stops and that of the international slate of remixers starts, but that doesn’t spoil the riches of this hour-plus experience.

The best track is the first, a cleansing take on ‘Post’ by the German solo artist Bersarin Quartett. It’s spacious and chill, the deconstructive drums and eventual sheet of synth pointing to post-rock and ambient respectively. From there, Iceland’s Worm Is Green brings a hip-hop thump to the more clear-cut ‘Untilted’, while the UK solo project Winterlight conjures electronic shoegaze worthy of a film score on ‘Every Sunday’. The San Francisco band Stripmall Architecture turns ‘Every Ghost Has Its Spectre’ into something called ‘Bitcrush in Dub’, relishing the tension between a squishy centre and the noise scratching at the sides. The Dutch duo Funckarma then seems to turn ‘Colder’ inside out.

Sequenced as it is, the collection’s second half follows a trajectory towards a more indie vibe, with Cadoo’s vocals often appearing at some level. Oregon solo artist Jatun takes ‘Waiting For Something’ from ambient dissolve to guitar-raked drama, whereas the Italian duo Vanessa Van Basten finds lush folktronica and then indie rock in ‘An Island A Peninsula’. San Francisco artist Near The Parenthesis applies keyboards and beats to his eight-minute remix of ‘The Days We Spent Within’, the Italian band Port-Royal scale ‘Of Embers’ back to a mellow survey of familiar elements, and Canadian artist SubtractiveLAD makes ‘Of Days’ roomy enough to bring the record full circle.

Either as an introduction to Bitcrush or just some impressionistic detour, here’s a bliss-out record with lots of ideas, details, and left turns to admire and appreciate. the skeleton crew quarterly

Remix albums are rarely a popular type of release, typically stirring as much anticipation as your average London Philharmonic Orchestra Plays the Music Of… compilation. I suspect a number of grounds for disinterest from a listener’s perspective: (1) the compilation lacks an appealing flow due to so many hands in the jar, (2) it’s recycled material that borrows from an original you likely prefer, and all these qualms arise after you consider the inherent disconnect behind The Remix as an idea, (3) whereby an artist who didn’t write the song reorganizes it without the heart. Coming from the top tiers of n5MD, however, this remix project made clear straightaway that all presumptions were mute.

Earlier this year, I was forced to take a hard look at my tenets of remix-ignorance upon the release of Aarktica’s In Sea Remixes, which, dare I say, nearly trumps the original 2009 effort. Bitcrush (Mike Cadoo, previously of Gridlock and Dryft) takes this revisionist approach a few step further with From Arcs To Embers, a collection of remixes that span his six releases, from 2004’s Enarc up to this year’s Of Embers. And I shouldn’t be surprised how excellent it is; a thrilling elegy of pillowed glitches and sweeping electronic melodies, From Arcs To Embers brings the emotional crème of Bitcrush’s compositions to the ice-surface. No one with a pulse should be able to escape the delicate power of Near the Parenthesis’ remix of ‘The Days We Spent Within’, which unfurls with the majesty of a subdued Sigur Ros epic, nor should they underestimate Bersarin Quartett’s widescreen remix of ‘Post’ which opens the album. With a strong focus on drifting beats and still-life atmospherics, it’s architecturally smart to have some head-nod worthy percussion, courtesy of Worm Is Green and Funckarma, bolster the LP from getting sleepy. Throw some explosive charges into the mix, such as Jatun’s take on ‘Waiting For Something’ and port-royal’s glacial stretch on ‘Of Embers’, and here we have another remix record in 2010 that has positively stumped me. Acting as both a collaborative celebration between well-respected electronic musicians and a necessary reminder of Bitcrush's exciting output so far, From Arcs To Embers closes this early chapter of Mike Cadoo's discography with grace and heart.

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