WOO
"When the Past arrives"
(LP. Drag City / Yoga rcds. 2014 / rec. 1976-2003) [GB]

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WOO
"When the Past arrives"
(LP. Drag City / Yoga rcds. 2014 / rec. 1976-2003) [GB]
Alexis Georgopoulos & Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Marine [Version by Woo] (Emotional Response, 2018)
WOO
"Into the Heart of Love"
(LP. Emotional Rescue. 2014 / rec. 1975-83) [GB]
All Is Well: A Conversation With Woo's Clive Ives
In its own way the music of British duo brothers Mark and Clive Ives—known creatively as Woo—seemeddestined for a digital world that the internet offers. They began making music together decades ago, but it’s only been within the last decade that they’ve started to receive the critical acclaim they rightly deserve. Their music is largely instrumental (though not always the case) and is…
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Reviews 212: Alexis Georgopoulos & Jefre Cantu-Ledesma
One of my favorite albums of 2017 was Fragments of a Season by Alexis Georgopoulos and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. I have been following the music of both artists for over a decade, having been there since ARP’s earliest days as well as Jefre’s post-rock explorations and psychedelic drum experiments in Tarentel. So getting to hear these long-time friends and musical icons stripping everything back and presenting an organic set of crystalline guitar and balearic dub-funk instrumentals was a sincere joy. At the end of 2018 and almost a year after it’s release, Emotional Response decided to revisit two of the albums tracks by way of a special remix package. Entitled Foreign Affairs, this 7” sees the legendary Woo following up their spellbinding E Ruscha V reworks with a version of “Marine” that doubles down on the tracks name by immersing the listener in a world of underwater fractals and chopping echowaves as pastoral jazz woodwinds float over skittering cymbal beats. Then experimental master Félicia Atkinson steps in and transforms “Cleo” into a melancholic dream pop drone out with sensual French whispers, chaotic field recordings, ghostly tremolo picks, and ecstatic drum rituals obscured by euphoria waves of guitar beauty.
Alexis Georgopoulos & Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Foreign Affairs (Emotional Response, 2018) Woo’s version of “Marine” starts with aquatic sound streaks and percolating bubble basslines, while fractured guitar webs disperse in all directions. Rhythms are built from hushed snare brushes and thudding kicks while every single electronic tone is fractalized and constantly mutating…like hyperspace energy meeting underwater beauty. A shuffling propulsion is built from the futuristic repetitions while dazzling pianos runs and acoustic guitar leads sit buried beneath the starshine tapestries. Mark Ives’s emotive clarinet soothes the hypnotic anxiety and as the rhythms and bass fade away, rainbow sequences reflect off of every surface while spacious angel melodies ring out. Once the rhythmic glide returns, ghostly guitars decay across the sky, tambourines jangle, and at some point the beats take on a more pronounced lounge feel with cool and jazzy rimshots cruising beneath weirdo electronic runs, paranoid wiggle fx, spectrally morphed melodies, and bleary-eye clarinets. As always with Woo, there’s an intoxicating convergence of pastoral folk and freaky cosmic experimentation, including a gaseous yet brief coda dominated by springtide classicisms and joyous ambient hazes.
Wind blowing against a microphone, the sounds of water, multi-tracked whispers and coos moving ear-to-ear, and chaotic tremolo flecks flying around the interior of the mind…this is Félicia Atkinson’s version of “Cleo.” Almost out of nowhere, a gorgeous guitar refrain emerges…these splashy chords giving off aquamarine clouds of ambient magic and backed by ecstatic yet obscured tom-tom beats. It all comes together and plunges the soul into a watery world of dreams, one where smeared out six-string solos work against heavenly riff cascades and strangely jarring percussive textures occasionally cut in…as if a swirling and ethereal vortex is periodically disturbed by flashes of nightmare. Towards the end, as the luscious ambient tapestries begin unravelling, we are left alone with Felicia’s haunted voice and the murky drum rituals as cold cavern sounds suffuse the air.
(images from my personal copy)
WOO “A la Luna” (LP. Emotional Rescue. 2017 / rec. 1991?) [GB]
WOO - It's Love