Peter Van Hoesen, Irrational X

[Exone]


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For an artist with such an intensely personal and even innovative sound, Belgium’s Peter Van Hoesen is remarkably prolific, pumping out material left-and-right on a number of different labels. His latest comes on Exercise One’s Exone label, and it’s a track that hearkens back to his slightly more assertive pre-2010 material. Where his recent work has seen him sometimes softening, flattening and dividing his sounds into more abstract territory, “Irrational X” is pure unleaded techno, shooting out with so much stored energy that it shakes and trembles as it charges forwards. The main riff is diced into tiny, harshly-angled blocks and it undulates up and down as wonderfully old-school sounding snares use it as a pillowy jumping-off point — it’s delightful to hear such rough and primitive sounds from the Hose again.

However, being a release on Exercise One’s label, there’s of course a remix by the duo themselves, quite ably managing to outshine the original. Upping the self-consciously “classic” factor, their remix sensually pumps blood into frozen veins, the punctured silences replaced by warm and heaving low-end fuzz. That impossibly long and twisty riff is bunched up into bursts of static that hit like glorious snags in the track’s progression — a purposeful malfunction. It’s a symphony of errors as these noises multiply and begin to form the backbone of the track, flipping the initially retro exercise into a triumphant workout in techno futurism. Perhaps ironically, it sounds much more in line with the recent Hose discography than the original mix, which either says a lot for Exercise One’s remixing skills or Van Hoesen’s considerably looming influence on techno at the moment. The original is also presented in a more deliberate “Slowmix,” taking the skeletal framework and gumming up the joints with noxious industrial waste products. It’s always a treat when a remix manages to actually improve on the faster version, and when the original is so solid to begin with, it’s hard to argue against a twelve like this.

Blaktony  on July 13, 2010 at 11:54 AM

Do it Pete!!!! (nice)

Pete Srdic  on July 15, 2010 at 9:46 PM

well this Pete bought immediately. It’s just tooooo good !

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