"on "we so horny", hey-ø-hansen strip down dub rhythms ranging from the fifties up to electronic dancehall and make them up freshly in the guise of dubstep. dub at the interface between digital and analog. with its monolithic consolidation of drums, bass, grating 80s synths, winds and echoes, the album soars above the berlin plains like an alpine rock face. the roots of hey-ø-hansen's music reach deeply into tyrolian folk music and its peculiar off-beat, but it's their studios in berlin where it unfolds its power. one half of the band is michael wolf, a painter, replete with artistic cross-grainedness. david thomas fred frith mark steward brian eno captain beefheart sonic youth the residents rhys chatham snakefinger john zorn - that's his musical background. the second half of the band is helmut erler. at least one generation younger than wolf. his cosmos is more contemporary; he's been working for many years as a sound engineer for dubplates & mastering. as far as dub and techno are concerned, this puts him in the tradition of basic channel and chain reaction, as he makes the sound for dial, ostgut-ton, applepips, sub:stance, hotflush, soloaction - just naming a few of the labels. so when you put wolf and erler together in a band, relocate them from tyrol to berlin, give them a good shaking and wait for fifteen years (that's how long hey-ø-hansen have been around) - it's hardly surprising when the result renders you speechless. austrodub - that's the white dub of the next generation. condensed, focussed, and precise. it's for all those who are still getting tearyeyed over 'roots', who are about to consider 'dubstep' done and over, and yet who know that the road always continues, that bass holds the world together." (label info) recommended.
|
