Visionquest Remixes

Visionquest Remixes

Visionquest [Dumb-Unit]

17 September, 2007 | 12.22PM

• Section: Music Reviews
• Written by: Lee Smith

Dumb-Unit does that slinking, murky, post-minimal thing better than most, and here the DU dream team get stuck into each other’s tracks with admirably warped gusto.

A joint collaboration between acclaimed upstarts Lee Curtiss, Ryan Crosson and Seth Troxler, Visionquest are a kind of like a nu-Detroit supergroup, with their heavily stylized, ultra-compressed tone aptly mingling of their home city’s industrial heritage and the more contemporary moods of European techno.

First up, their remix of Sweet N’ Candy’s ‘Dirty Gotches’ injects a sinister air-raid siren in amongst a lolloping bass warble and scratchy disembodied vocals.

Indeterminate layers of popping percussive clips bubble around the central swing, sounding by turns naively playful and unsettlingly menacing.

Their take on Butane’s ‘How Low Can You Go’ is snappier, with a spring-propelled organ riff perking things up atop a loose-limbed groove.

It’s hardly joyous, but there’s an abject optimism to ‘How Low Can You Go’ that’s not apparent in Butane’s individual work.

Lee Curtiss offers his own version of the track here too, and true to form, it’s a sub-heavy, darkside lurcher engineered for the shadowy corners of the club.

The trio close the EP with another remix of Butane, this time his masterfully nihilistic ‘Next’.

In keeping with the spirit of the original, there’s a bleak shimmer to proceedings, but it’s never too oppressive, with a nefariously fun tinge throughout.

You sense that for all the doomy cadences and brain melting delays, it’s all knocked together with a wry, albeit vaguely demonic, grin.

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