Austin Buckett: Grain Loops + Sand Stems 1-7 (Room40, 2014)
June 7, 2014 at 9:15 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Austin Buckett: Grain Loops
Experimental composer Austin Buckett created the 30 minute-long loops on this album strictly by recording the sounds of snare drums and sandpaper. The result is a series of patterns of various speeds which imitate washing machines, photocopiers, factory machinery, and any other repetitive mechanical devices that are a part of daily human life. These rhythms, of course, can be used as DJ tools, or form building blocks for music, and it’s not hard to sample these and create songs out of them. So naturally there’s a remix EP available as a
free download. Listening to all 30 loops in succession can be equal parts thrilling/headnodding and monotonous, so the presence of more musical elements added to some of the remixes can be a welcome change.
Austin Buckett: Sand Stems 1-7
The remixers tend to arrange the loops into clicky rhythms, add distortion, or somewhat attempt to make them more danceable. Andrew Pekler turns the rhythms gloopy and nauseous, Scissorlock makes sort of a cut-up hypnogogic hip-hop instrumental, and DJ Earl and Heavee go the footwork route.
The Answer Is In The Beat 
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