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Taiwanese-Brooklyn transplant Calvin “Kai-Wei” Chang’s debut album Reprocessor is musical, dense and seemingly done-based, inflicting it to straddle plenty of genres from experimental to darkwave to IDM, however that’s not what units it aside. It’s the truth that it’s made solely from discovered sounds, recorded by Chang between 2020 and 2022; no additional sounds or samples have been added. Meant to doc the adjustments in life throughout COVID, Chang took these sounds and painstakingly reworked, re-engineered and, in fact, reprocessed them till they made the visceral, flowing assertion piece that’s this album. Chang sums it up finest himself:
Reprocessor is a sonic documentation and “musicalization” of Covid19 period discovered sounds, with songs composed between 2020-2022. In lieu of standard “transforming” of supply supplies, over two hours in size of uncooked recordings are repetitively bolstered, dissected and extracted for expressive sonic occasions.
When one actually stops to consider the truth that the supply materials on Reprocessor is the one materials, it’s form of mindboggling, particularly from the attitude of an EDM producer; that is how digital music was initially fashioned again within the Forties via the 60s and even as much as the 80s. Earlier than we had this huge library of sounds for drums, kicks, snares, pianos and strings to switch for synths, all of these issues needed to be recoded, pitched, cleaned up, saved and handed on so there may even be synthesizers and programmers. We’re to date modernized now that it’s all taken without any consideration and the sounds and area have turn out to be so clear and correct that new sounds are created from samples of samples of samples. So what occurs when a producer applies all this new tech to the grassroots sound sound loop format? Kaiwei has the reply.
It doesn’t appear Kaiwei’s intention with Reprocessor was to go grassroots in any method, however moderately to see what it will sound prefer to make full compositions out of discovered recordings utilizing fashionable gear. One may simply glean that even with fashionable advantages, it’s a painstaking and tedious means of math, code, and reduce/copy/paste to get mentioned compositions lined up, layered and sounding something like music. The end result, nonetheless, appears definitely worth the hassle.
With plenty of instrumental musicians additionally contributing sounds to the album, Reprocessor could be very a lot nonetheless within the experimental realm of issues, and listening to it, one can simply perceive how he’s earned a repute for his compositions accompanying multimedia artwork instillations and avant garde performing arts items. That mentioned, it’s additionally very a lot tinged with drone, industrial and even deep home sounds. The musicality of many items, such because the title observe, “Breakbeat Funky 102” (in case you assume there’s something resembling a standard breakbeat on this observe, you’d be useless incorrect) and the “Tors” collection is perhaps arduous to search out on first pay attention, however hold listening. By the drone and chaos, nearly each a part of these tracks it an really fairly delicate piece of symphony-like composition.
Different tracks, comparable to “Id” (the one observe with a discernable beat), “4u” and the endlessly ambient “Duet” sound extra trad musical however that’s solely as a result of they’re additionally fairly melodic and have recognizable music sounds. What Reprocessor asks of the listener is to take the album as a complete and join the dots so the music could be heard in any a part of the composition. “Chung Yeung,” a our YEDM premiere as we speak, is the primary observe on the album and appears to be a preview of this obvious dichotomy, straddling the heavy and the elegant and discovering music in each components.
The opening observe of this file, “Chung Yeung” is in of itself a compilation of brief compositional and sonic concepts, that each one sprung from a collection of freely improvised, live-processed trombone and vocal performances. The multi-sectional type foreshadows the overarching construction of the complete file, in addition to a few of its key sonic components and themes.
Named after the well-known lunar calendar competition (loosely translated at “Double Ninth Competition” because it takes place on the ninth day of the ninth month), a day of remembrance the place the Chinese language and Taiwanese individuals climb mountains to their ancestors’ graves to scrub, keep and depart items, “Chung Yeung” units a somber tone for the album: that is each a remembrance of the struggles of COVID and maybe those that misplaced their lives, and a clearing out and “reprocessing” of these ghostly sounds and energies from a interval many people are nonetheless making an attempt to course of.
The realm of experimental music serves as a forefront instance of what could also be doable in business music and mentioned business musicians look to artists like Kaiwei to push that boundary for them. Nevertheless within the case of Reprocessor, it appears Kaiwei can also be saying it’s essential to know ones roots and hone one’s compositional abilities as properly. COVID confirmed humanity its personal limitations; we’re one photo voltaic flare away from shedding most if not all of our digital assets, however Kaiwei and others who know easy methods to create music from their very own loops would possible be main the cost in that case. Within the meantime, capturing the vitality and feeling of such a tumultuous time can also be essential. If nothing else, Reprocessor exhibits that creativity will all the time discover a method, and that it’s going to even make new methods for sound and expression with just some discovered loops, a heap of endurance and a have to be heard.
Reprocessor releases on Monday, October ninth and can be accessible to stream on Spotify (the place just a few tracks are already accessible) and could be pre-ordered for buy on Kaiwei’s Bandcamp page.
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