“We wondered where you’d been.”
After last year’s return to Ransom Note Records from Jim Cooke aka Graintable, he’s enlisted extended R$N and Portland family to reinterpret his Universal Ash body of work.
The Universal Ash LP was an overwhelming experience that built on its predecessor’s mind-altering ambient odysseys casting its stylistic horizons deeper and wider. The originals were recorded in a series of one-take hardware jams, speaking to the liberating, creative power of chasing an idea with little thought as to where it might take you there were no parts. With this in mind they’ve been stretched, morphed and reinterpreted in altogether new directions on this EP.
First up former Stereolab keyboardist Morgane Lhote aka Hologram Teen notches the tempo of Tea Forest up into a short, sharp, motorik synth-laden stomp that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Factory Records b-side, with the original’s woozy, wonky tape drifting through the ether.
Next up Timothy Clerkin changes down a gear on his Tidewater take with something akin to his recent GLOK (aka Andy Bell from RIDE) reworking. An acidic, disorientating record to be played at dawn as the world moves back into focus.
After the rapturous response of his Space Techno EP last year on R$N recs Daniel Herrmann aka Flug 8 has resurrected his stripped back, sparse, galactic thumps and turned Dark Surface into another one of his interplanetary explorations in deep space.
Portland’s very own Coast2C – a self-thought musician, student and volunteer at The Synth Library – rounds off proceedings with her take on FMMPC. Part experimental techno, part textured drone reimagining Sofia’s take is like something from Aphex Twin’s Ambient Works distilled through a post Covid-19 lens.
On Universal Ash, real life shone in through the cracks. With Reinterpreted Universes these cracks have opened up and put back together and new light from different angles projected through.
Socials:
https://twitter.com/graintable
https://soundcloud.com/
https://ransomnoterecords.
records@theransomnote.co.uk
