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Alec Empire and EL-P, "Shards of Pol Pottery (The 2001 Remixes)"

Teutonic riotmaster Alec Empire rears his ugly head again on thisrelease, throwing down a new bag of tricks far removed from his bestknown work as titular head of teen-noise-pop-sensations Atari TeenageRiot. Here he dips into a grab bag pastiche of studio tricks to producea 62-minute slab of chunky hip-hop beats, some atypical noise guitarand the vocal stylings of MC El-P. Then again, since this release is 12mixes of the same song, it's better geared towards completists and DJ'sthan the general consumer public. The track itself is hard hitting asexpected - funky, menacing keyboards reminiscent of ATR's 'Waves ofDisaster', a nice cold feeling permeates this track even asunidentified electronic squee warms the brain and much head bobbing isinduced. The other tracks are all variations on this one theme:'Accapella mix', 'Hard Beats', 'Hard Beats and Voice' - you get theidea. The only real remix here would be the excellent 'No Wave Mix' - asubdued bit of tone generations, casio-style drums and squiggly 404action; and the 'Black Moon Mix' which is an excellent fucking mess -both of which would be great for those 3AM crank burnouts I'm sureyou're so fond of. Released in both the UK and the US so buy domestic.

 

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