The Remakquels - Degrees of Slowness and Speed

 

Released: March 20

One of the several side-projects of the prolific Heavy Cloud (maybe?), the latest album from The Remakquels is a distorted and tempo-slewed mess of compositions that has a strange and haunting quality in each warp, wobble, and bend. Constructed primarily from the use of doo-wop melodies on vinyl, the source material is twisted up in odd ways with inconsistent tempos and pitches that slow down, speed up, go high, and go low without warning. But despite whatever manipulations occur to the vinyl bits, they remain mostly recognizable as their original melodies. Mostly. The bizarre effects of the vinyl manipulation is paired with noisy and sometimes cacophonous noise that seems to experience much of the same twisting and manipulation of the vinylized melodies. 

Throughout the album, there are some very odd and captivating moments.  A favorite of mine happens on "You are walking down the street (my love)" as the sweet vocal melodies and harmonies slowly glitch and stutter in. Suddenly, there is a bit of clarity as the melodies quickly increases in speed and pitch, emphasizing the woos and hoos beautifully until hitting a wall and turning in to low pitched tones that border on becoming mud. A similar thing happens earlier in the album with "Between speed and forgetting (I told you)" although this track uses its vocalizations in much shorter loops, almost to the point that these vocals become short percussive glitches at times. I do wonder how exactly these vinyl loops came together. Though I assume that this may have just been a magical discovery that just so happened to occur.