A vast and daunting collection, ‘Redrawn’ consists of 20 remixes by as many artists of pieces from last year’s ‘Drawn’, a collaboration between minimalist songstress Soccer Committee (Mariska Baars) and electronic producer Machinefabriek (Rutger Zuydervelt). The original set was a gorgeous synthesis of analogue song and digital process, with Zuydervelt particularly commendable in his restraint; this was not merely another crackly, drifiting Machinefabriek release (as welcome as they are). With ‘Redrawn’ they’ve assembled a strong cast, and the results are predictably impressive, however the unity which was such an endearing feature of the original has been unavoidably, and intentionally, lost in translation.
With such a range of artists on board, approaches taken here span as broad a divide as that between Zuydervelt and Baars. So we see versions as stripped-back and earnest as Goldmund’s and Squares on Both Sides’s, vocals foregrounded amid bare arrangements of few acoustic instruments, to the abstract constructions of Steinbruchel and Lawrence English, where the original struggles to be heard through layers of Machinefabriek-esque drone. Middle-ground approaches include Taylor Deupree’s, who allows traces of Baars’s voice to creep through howling winds and sine webs, and Tori, Reiko and Namio Kudo’s, who cleave the voice in two, leaving one to whisper in the background, the other to mumble up front, while shivering pads mix with birdsong. Highlights include Gary Smith’s version of ‘Solo Guitar into a Duo’, where faint pings of guitar battle against waves of Jeck-like static, the pings building into sharp blades which slice the fog like a razor; in ‘Very Well Drawn, Re-edited’, Francisco Lopez destroys all trace of song with terrifying subbass rumbles and disorienting doppler whoomps; and North Sea’s ‘Di O Day’, where the original appears refracted through the hiss of radio, and the distance of some mythic North Sea voyage. All of the pieces on ‘Redrawn’ offer effective, rewarding takes on the source material, yet the album’s 80 minutes are best absorbed in multiple sessions, in order to take it all in.
Joshua Meggitt
