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They, along with people like Christian Marclay, EmilBeaulieau, and Boyd Rice, became the first to take a turntable'sarchaic playback mechanism to task as an instrument, capable not onlyof an easily-manipulated and virtually inexhaustible bank of noise, butalso of almost automatic syntactic headfuckery. The plunderphonic,Negativlandian impulse had already begun to assert itself in 1987, butGum's purely phonographic stance brought that same brand of pop culturecommentary and exploited sound-bytes in immediate collision with thingspurely visceral. The duo scratched, sanded, baked, burnt, and otherwisemutated their thrift store finds, assembling a collection of lockedgrooves and blasted sound chips that essentially gave forgotten recordsnew life, fodder for a kind of surreal puppet circus where strung-upcorpses grind out stunted, nervous repetitions of a living dance. Gum'strajectory moves from something like a punkier incarnation of theplunderphonic phenomenon, to amateur industrial klang, to wildlysuccessful sound collage efforts that in many ways predict the soundsof today's turntable namedrops: Philip Jeck, Martin Tretault, JanekSchaefer. Curtis and Samartzis put more emphasis on the process end,that is the abrasions and mutations of the records and their preciserecombination, than on any kind of re-contextualization of recognizablesources. The few tracks to actually show their age are in fact the oneswhere the duo's intent appears too transparent, their motives too easy:phone-sex dialogue featuring Curtis set to an effected Super Fly soundtrack or a live set where the Bee Gee's Saturday Night Feverbecomes the rhythmic template. Elsewhere, the simple and arrestingpower of the duo's surface scavenges, and their queasy track titles("Testicle Stretch," "Smooth Torture in Exile," "Arm Fuck"), becomemore than adequate in communicating a hilarious, dystopian, andultimately beautiful worldview. Especially on the longer tracks like"Banning" or "Melted Limp Fallout," Gum achieves mysterious andimmersive sound environments that feel perfectly suited to the presentday and help to explain Samartzis' future work as an accomplished soundartist. Vinyl Anthology collects everything Gum released plusseveral unreleased and live tracks; it is indispensable document forfans of turntable-based music, punkers, noisers, and pop theoristsworldwide. - Andrew Cullersamples:
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