DJ/Rupture & Andy Moor - Patches

Atmospheres and essences.

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Pitchforkmedia says: Upon hearing that DJ/rupture is following his stellar 2008 mix, Uproot, with an Andy Moor collaboration, for a second there we worried the dude in question was the trance producer. After all, in 2009 all bets are off, and logic can basically go fuck itself: Hot Chip recently recorded with Robert Wyatt; Chris Cornell with Timbaland (although this makes a weird kind of sense for Cornell-- too pretty for Grungetown, too grungy for Prettytown, he's always been stuck between worlds). And now, this.

In fact, the Andy Moor in question is the Netherlands-based guitarist from such revered anarcho-punk bands as Dog Faced Hermans and the Ex. Patches consists of live, improvised tracks the duo recorded while touring together-- Moor on guitar, Rupture on turntables. In some ways, it's the opposite of Uproot: guitar-centric, spontaneous, and brittle. It sounds like an odd match, but if any punk guitarist is equipped for this sort of thing, it's Moor. Like Rupture, the Ex is known for incorporating a broad variety of non-Western styles into its music. Moor also has improv chops, as evidenced by the Ex's extemporaneous double-LP Instant and In the Fishtank collaborations with Sonic Youth and ICP. Rupture and Moor use different media, but their curatorial interests are alike.

Together, they've forged an often-delirious concoction of post-punk serration, dubstep duskiness, hip-hop swagger, and free-jazz texture. As a general tendency, Moor vamps on arid, precise riffs, around which Rupture weaves loose nets of manhandled breaks. Then he tightens the net as the riffs become more assertive, as if to keep them from galloping away. Some of Rupture's samples are glaringly obvious-- another shift from the arcane selections of Uproot. On the dubby "Ella Speed", Moor plays spidery figures as Rupture flips the wolf whistle from Juelz Santana's "There It Go (The Whistle Song)"; on "One Hundred Month Bloom" toneless guitar meets a tweaky version of the famous overture from Smashing Pumpkins' "Today". On "Jimmy Rogers", Diana Ross sings "My World Is Empty Without You" over disembodied vocals, shrieking pitches, and subliminal chords. Tracy Chapman shows up on "Tracy", its time-bomb riff ticking down to an echoing excerpt from "Behind the Wall". These moments feel like an unusually arty Girl Talk set, and are balanced by a ton of stealthy samples I'm helpless to identify.

The vibe is persistently chilly, the terrain merciless-- even when Moor sets controls for the heart of the sun, as on the riff-heavy "The Sheep Look Up", he can't thaw Rupture's unforgiving tundra. Some tracks are spectral and nebulous, like the watery, de-tuned "Tidal". The riddim-oriented ones are better-- on "Chisanga", Moor's string-bent squiggles gradually flatten out into a hitching riff, which Rupture surrounds with a phalanx of strafing drums. But the ones where they truly mind-meld, rather than Rupture chasing after Moor's riffs with periphery-bound FX, are best. On "Hot Pink Orleans", mercury-slick sonar blips, pinging whammy-barred guitars, and scudding bass amass into a well-balanced dubstep apparatus. On "Sometimes It Can Be Difficult To", nervous guitar skitters, nervous scratches, and reverbed snares build into something resembling a terrible car crash. "Our Enemies Have Watches But We Have Time" astonishes with its violent drum breaks, which make Moor's snarling riff sound meek by comparison.

True to its circumscribed nature, Patches lacks the awesome diversity of Uproot. But it's impressive that this improvised work packs a clandestine socio-political payload, which usually resolves in some latent irony between samples and song titles (although Tracy Chapman's lament of police uselessness is politically loaded from the start). If you know that "Ella Speed" is the title of a blues song about a man who becomes obsessed with a prostitute and shoots her to death, those Juelz whistles become less of a "hey I recognize that" gimmick, and more of an astringent comment on predatory male lust. The machine-gun drums and land-mine chords of "Our Enemies Have Watches But We Have Time" are a bit chilling if you know the title is a Taliban slogan. "The Sheep Look Up" takes its title from a dystopian sci-fi novel by John Brunner, which deals with environmental degradation in the U.S., making its party vibe rather sardonic. Careful listeners will discover other secret polemics, buried so deeply as not to disturb those who simply want to marvel at the killer instincts and catlike reflexes of Moor and Rupture live.

— Brian Howe, February 9, 2009

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