Yair Etziony:
Albion Remixes
False Industries
As a remix EP typically follows on the heels of an artist's most recent full-length, one would have expected Yair Etziony to issue a remix collection based on his 2018 Deliverance full-length rather than 2015's Albion, his final album before moving from Tel Aviv to Berlin and the third part in his “Mist in the Corners” trilogy. Whether a Deliverance Remixes EP will appear in 2020 isn't yet known, but we can at least say a few words about the overhauls Fhloston Paradigm, Alec Empire, Maps and Diagrams, and Daniela Orvin produced using the Albion material.
Operating under his Fhloston Paradigm guise, Philadelphian King Britt opens the EP with a mighty flourish in a sci-fi-inspired makeover of “Never Again.” Starbursts, alien convulsions, and a female voiceover set a dramatic scene before stepping aside to let a synthetically sleek, Detroit-styled techno pulse take over, its engaging swish and swing quickly erasing all memory of the dark gestures with which the treatment began. Forever associated with Atari Teenage Riot, Alec Empire brings a similar dynamism to an old-school “Imperium Romanum” re-imagining that lures crawling dubstep and lethal drum'n'bass pulses into its foreboding orbit. As anyone familiar with Tim Martin's releases would anticipate, his resplendent Maps and Diagrams remix of “Nightwatcher” eschews the vicious snarl of Empire's for something closer in spirit to dreamy ambient-electronica, an arresting presentation nonetheless if one less aggressive in tone. At EP's end, Berlin composer Daniela Orvin steps up for a beats-free “Avalon” re-rub that pushes the symphonic suggestiveness of Martin's contribution to the next level, with in this case orchestral string swells, horn declamations, and wordless vocal utterances conjoined to synthesizer whooshes and sequencer patterns. It hardly needs be stated that the four producers corralled by Etziony for the release offer stylistically contrasting takes on the Albion originals.April 2018