The sound sources for Wieman are other people’ music, but don’ be confused with plunderphonics, because according to Wieman what we’re hearing here is meltpop. Each of the previous projects of Frans De Waard and Roel Meelkop, previously of Goem (Raster-Noton/ Mego/ 12K), have all possessed strict conceptual parameters. Under their previous moniker Zèbra (they were asked to change their name by a US band), they sampled songs with the word “music’ in the title, for another release they used only music from Joy Division producer Martin Hannett (Live In Leugen) and a cassette for Dutch label Limbabwe was comprised of samples garnered from the labels previous releases. In 2013 in a confusing conceptual moment they recorded an album using only samples from their previous band Goem.
This time they’ve gathered sounds from music that has used the words “symphony’, “overture’, “fanfare’ and “rhapsody’ in the title, and the results are not what you’d expect. The Classics Album is incredibly diverse and incredibly strange, from the almost locked groove sample repetition of the opener “With a lat of verve’ to the clipped minimal glitch funk of “The King ist queer,’ to the heavy metal riffing of “The Lady es a tramp,’ we’re covering some pretty diverse terrain. In fact even within these pieces there are lots of ingredients that sit not necessarily uncomfortably, but more confusingly together.
Recorded over a six-year period, you can hear the care taken in the construction. There’ a willful perversity here, a certain joy in combining the unthinkable and attempting to create some sense of order. There are subliminal elements of house music present – a desire to unify the ingredients into a uniform groove running through this album, though their mischievous tendencies are too overpowering and this intent rarely lasts for an entire track.
The final piece, the sixteen-minute plus “Do You Have Elp’ demonstrates another approach, the slow ambient burn, where change comes almost without your realisation and static takes on melodic duties. It builds up into a satisfying minimal groove before evolving into a new age noise piece with shifting ambient swells. It’s a piece that highlights the complexity of Wieman’ music. The pieces are constantly shifting, denying and defying genres, digging from the past to create their strange new worlds and reminding us that in 2014 all sounds are forever up for grabs. Ambient can become disco, classical can become noise, and songs with the words symphony’, “overture’, “fanfare’ and “rhapsody’ in the title can become meltpop.
