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Arecibo, "Trans Plutonian Transmissions"
Brian (Lustmord) Williams' long-out-of-print 1994 ode to the vastness of space has been remastered and reissued. The record may sound better now than it did 15 years ago, but I’m not sure that all of it has stood the test of time.
As soon as I heard that Wlliams had a ‘side project’ of sorts where he used deep space data from radio telescopes, I rushed out to buy that record. The extended drones and minimalist synths with patches of faint NASA radio chatter were exactly what I was looking for in 1994. Ambient electronic music was everywhere, but most of it teetered on the edge of new age tedium or uninspired techno as vacant as the spaces from which it drew inspiration. I had it in my mind that Lustmord working with some rhythms and space sounds would be the perfect antidote to all of that hippie techno bullshit. And for the most part, it was.
I used to drop a track from Trans Plutonian Transmissions into every one of my DJ sets because whether I wanted to lay some minimal Scorn beats over Arecibo’s atonal wash or mix “Anomalous Intermittent Radio Source” into tracks from Sub Dub and DJ Olive, it always worked perfectly. It was never a record that I would listen to from top to bottom, but it played well with most of the other things I was into in the mid-'90s and it always felt like a rare gem. I guess that the rareness was real, as the record has long been out-of-print and commanding nice sums from collectors at auction. I wish I had known—I still have my original copy and I haven’t listened to it in probably 10 years.
The reissue has been remastered, but it doesn’t sound extraordinarily different to me. In fact, I don’t think that most listeners will detect much of a change at all which is probably a good thing. People will likely just be happy that the record is available again, but I’m not sure that all of it has held up. The lumbering plodding of “Beyond the Heart of Space” wears out its welcome to these old ears long before its 13:45 runtime is up, although I likely would have loved it 15 years ago. The NASA radio samples and control room chatter that dominate a couple of tracks remind me an awful lot of The Orb, and they take otherwise serious, dark pieces and make them sound like a 909 kick drum is right around the corner. I still love “Anomalous Intermittent Radio Source” as an example of Lustmord edging towards dubby trip hop, but most of the slower ambient pieces don’t stand out as much as I remember.
The notion I keep coming back to when I listen to this old record with a new perspective is that if I didn’t know this record used deep space data, I would have no idea that it was inspired by such a source. If I was told that this record used sounds gathered in caves or underwater or from field recordings in the desert, I wouldn’t be surprised. As a composer, Williams surely brings his own perspective to the work, so this record sounds exactly like I would expect a record about space by a guy who is a master sound designer and dark music producer, but I’m not sure it is enough to make it work. In a way, it reminds me of those cooking shows where they give chefs some unexpected ingredients and ask them to whip something up. Of course the Italian chef is going to take whatever he’s given and make an Italian dish out of it!
I wonder if space is really as moody and creepy as Arecibo makes it out to be? On her album “Music from the Galaxies,” Dr. Fiorella Terenzi took a similar sound source and made something much more playful out of it. Trans Plutonian Transmissions would work perfectly as the soundtrack to a movie where the derelict spaceship is drifting off into space with its crew in peril, but it seems a little less honest than it could be given the explosive, violent, and energetic nature celestial bodies.
Perhaps Arecibo is about looking into the vast expanse of the universe and focusing on the emptiness and the dark matter, rather than the light and energy. I get that, and in 1994 that was really all I wanted to hear. Now, though there are parts of this record that I still like a lot, it doesn’t intrigue me as much as the idea of the same composer visiting this same idea with a new take on it.
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