Fluid Sonic Fluctuation 112
Crown Shyness: Isonautics Remixed
as kindly provided to me as a review copy by Quantum Natives
released 24/February/2020
Catalogue number: QNRX024
This is Fluid Sonic Fluctuation review 112 in which today I have for you the next release on Quantum Natives after sigh by soapkin, which I previously reviewed (https://fluidsf.tumblr.com/post/617920131522347008/fluid-sonic-fluctuation-111-soapkin-sigh-as). This is a recent remix album by Crown Shyness titled Isonautics Remixed which features various tracks from Crown Shyness excellent 2019 album Isonautics in remixed versions by a curious cast of experimental, installation and visual artists. Rather than feeling like a remix “compilation” in terms of flow in the tracklist, Isonautics Remixed is rather a remix album, feeling as much as an immersive journey as the original Isonautics album. Before we go on a journey through this remix album, let’s have a look at the cast of artists that feature on Isonautics Remixed. First of all, Crown Shyness himself is a project by American artist Kevin Carey. Using the name Crown Shyness, Kevin has released his debut album Isonautics on Quantum Natives last year and several tracks of his have also appeared on mixes and compilations. Looking back on Isonautics and the review I wrote about it in 2019, I can say it’s an excellent and very immersive nocturnal sonic journey in this icy seascape of which various elements are still recognisable on Isonautics Remixed too, though with different approaches of sound manipulation applied to them. The first of the remixers featured on Isonautics Remixed is bod [包家巷] (Nicolas Zhu), an American audiovisual artist creating richly layered sound collage infused music, who released music on labels like Pastel Voids, Danse Noire, Knives and the surreal religion themed label AMEN. Recently he released an especially expansive collection of music titled Music for Self Esteem on Swedish collective and label YEAR0001. Afterwards on track 2 of Isonautics Remixed we have this artist called djpuppy whom I didn’t find much info on but did also feature on last year’s Quantum Native four way split release Dreamcasthe by Dragoon and has also featured on a split release called Nocturnal Idiot / 夜行馬鹿 on Japanese label Ukiuki Atama with woopheadclrms (whose Genot Centre tape vs o.t.O.g.I I reviewed last year). Quite radical, plunderphonics and Hardcore influenced music from what I found out. On tracks 3 and 7 we have reworks by Taiwanese installation artist Tzu Ni (Hung Tzu Ni) who creates works in which she uses light and sound to envelop the audience inside immersive imaginative environments and imagery. Most of her music is available self-released on Bandcamp as well as on Bandcamp pages by her collaborators and has also been released on compilations by Future Proof 面向異日 and Engram Recordings. The fourth featured remixer on this remix album is yma who previously released an EP length release titled sunset on Quantum Natives, has featured on a compilation on Dark Jinja and while her music can be found tagged with “Ambient” or “Ambient Pop” online has made quite a different style of remix than you’d think, on this remix album. Remixer number 5 is umbilical friend, who curiously according to Bandcamp are also a Californian band but regardless of the sometimes confusing paths artist names can take when looking them up online, umbilical friend delivers a great remix on here. WH is a remixer of whom I couldn’t find information online but perhaps we will see music by WH released on Quantum Natives, a bit of a mystery artist I’d say. On track 8 we have a remix by swivelized (sounds), a Taiwanese sound artist who mixes Noise, plunderphonics, Pop influences and more in works as swivelized sounds as well as various other names with self-releases on his own series of Bandcamp profiles including swiʌelaηd, cassette to cassette and normaled. swivelized sounds also released music on Quantum Natives, Future Proof : 面向異日 and has been featured in compilations and mixes released by Beastonleash, Astral Plane Recordings and Genot Centre. On track 9 we have a remix by American experimental Weightless and Deconstructed Club artist faithful (Michael Stumpf). faithful has released music on Prehistoric Silence and Anòmia, as well as various self-released singles and DJ mixes. His music has been featured on compilations on AMEN, Eternal and benska. The final remix is by Adum Brate, who’s been credited for another remix of music by Kevin Carey of Crown Shyness on Knightwerk Records as well as creating artwork for yma’s EP length single sunset. Isonautics Remixed comes in the form of a download including the 10 remixes in MP3 format as well as the cover artwork in good resolution and icon files. Now that we know who most of the remixers on Isonautics Remixed are and know the format of the release, let’s dive into this remix album.
Isonautics Remixed as a full listening experience feels a lot like going on a journey on an at times wildly rocking ship, hearing the details of chains, machinery, metallic resonances in- and outside the ship and fragments of music and voices. Similar to Isonautics (the original album) this journey feels quite nocturnal as in the rich sonic imagery the remixers have conjured up by reworking the originals still matches the night sound but this time with a more surreal and eerie series of flashing pictures we come across while listening. The often seamless transition from one track to the other also makes the remixes feel like one whole long and varied composition. We enter through Stormborn (bod [包家巷]'s morning lullaby), which indeed could sound like a morning lullaby bod [包家巷] has created here on the ship but rather than being one of peaceful and happy visions rocking someone to sleep there’s actually quite a melancholic and sombre tone to the piece. The low pitched slow warm reverberated filtered strings back the heavily pitch manipulated slow sung vocals which appear to express the inner struggles and journey a crew member of the ship could’ve been on before he ended up on this cold ship. The subtly degraded strings combined with mellow synth tones add both elegance (the former) and a bit of sunlight (the latter) to the otherwise rather bleak environment the crew member is in. A storm is enveloping the ship, rain is falling, water is pouring in, leaking all over the floor as the crew member moves onto his work in Engineering. You can hear the machinery of the Engineering section of the ship in the second half of the remix which features a great mechanical Deconstructed Club with some lovely pitch stuttering, sample chopping and ringing high pitched percussion until the music returns back to the lullaby itself. A great start of our journey in Isonautics Remixed. Afterwards we move directly into Spiral (djpuppy remix) which is one of the shorter remixes and follows more of a single continuous path in terms of composition. Sounding like an ethereal dream image created out of the maintenance of the ship’s machinery the remix continues the scraping mechanics of the previous remix but with more timestretching processing (which could be seen as a high-tech aspect of the machinery on the ship) and metallic bass swirls. The ethereal element about the ambience can be heard in the uplifting combination of sampled and autopan / leslie speaker manipulated vocal samples mixed with angelic choir samples. Chops of male voice samples (which also return later on in Isonautics Remixed) are blended in the mixture. The humming bass drone of the piece appears to the hum of the ship’s engine, a great short remix which works as a sonic point of focus as well as a good transition piece to the next track. This next track is Leak, Granite (Tzu Ni 目) in which we move into a surreal sonic image which appears to show us the inside of the quiet ship laying still in a harbour as an Industrial environment of strange metallic noises, high pitched clicky stutters sounding like small parts of the ships machinery, sharp hisses of Noise and steam as well as the eerie bursts of both meditation like low pitch male voice samples and what sounds like recordings of Taiwanese AM radio coming in like leaked sound falling out of the ships internal communication system. The sub bass layer of the piece also appears to detail the ship engine’s idle state subtly rumbling the steel floors of the ships deck. An eerie soundscape which makes great use of timing the sonic elements as well as multiple different layers of continuity in the sound progression of the separate elements. Afterwards on Stormborn (yma remix) yma further elaborates on the theme of the ship’s engine as both an Industrial and meditatively droning element in the sonic imagery through a dream-like stream of a piece in which we can hear some elements also used in the first remix by Stormborn (especially in the mechanical details). Sounding like what could be the imagination of the engine itself if it were an actual, albeit possible alien “being” the piece blends mechanical ticking and stuttering sounds, Deconstructed style drum samples, ethereal manipulated vocal sample ambiences with quite abrasive Noise elements in the form of distortion manipulations and very exciting chops of morphed organic mechanics crawling around the stereo image like the engine is growing its own leaves in the water. Switching from heavily technical “speeches” of stuttered, chopped and in other ways processed machinery noises to more introspective “thoughtful” ambience meditations, the remix feels like technology processing the emotional qualities of sound through its own mechanism, eventual discovering its surrounding, the sea and eventually merging with it. A living ship’s engine, very intriguing. Leak (umbilical friend remix) which follows is a more minimalist interpretation of imagery to see on the ship. Moving out of the engine and back to the decks of the ship we can now hear the nocturnal life on the ship as expressed in more club themed (Minimal) Techno beats and cleaner versions of the elements from the original track which are chopped up and manipulated through delay. A resonant metallic percussive sound seems to guide the hypnotic rattling of metals backed by the jumpy and at times low pass filtered bouncy kick drum which appear to entrance us with their repetitive but ever progressing streaming patterns of mechanical movement. The piece is as much dancey as it is immersive with its excellent combination of polyrhythmic grooves and rich sonic details. Afterwards we move into deeper territory with the eerie Dark Ambient piece that is Home of Depths (WH Version). Feeling quite reminiscent of Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II the remix features mysterious filtered and delay effected Dub Techno style resonant synth stabs that tumble around in a hypnotic pulse, every few beats being changed for a rising hollow filtered synth sweep. The texture of the tones is glowing but also saturated, ever increasing in harshness. Whilst the first third of the piece is a bit different featuring more peaceful and brightly atmospheric sweeping synth pads, backed by calm rustling field recordings that sound more like rowing pans from a little boat, I can definitely feel the darkness in the latter sections of the piece with squelchy manipulated (digital) details at times still adding some quirkiness to the gloomy ambience but the general vibe being that of danger, darkness outside on and in the ocean around the ship. A great touch is the owl field recording which appears only once in the piece. The shifting sounds of water can’t help but feel threatening however, reminding us that water is all around us and we can’t escape truly now that a thick fog is covering the nocturnal environment outside the ship and the cut off ending tail of the piece appears to tell us these strange spirits we can’t see will definitely return later. Granite, Leak (Tzu Ni 日) follows in which Tzu Ni follows up from Leak, Granite (Tzu Ni 目) with a more glitched out and minimalist piece. Starting with a first half that features a lot of the aforementioned glitching, stutters, resonant filters on the separate synth elements and chopped filed recordings the piece starts of as a rather quirky sonification of the ship’s engine full of little high pitched tones, seagull like squeaking gears, weird vocal sample manipulations like ghosts, crackling and machinery flapping like steam-power bird wings. This bird wing rhythm continues onwards in the second half of the piece where it builds into a multi layered rhythmic stream of squelchy scratched and distorted mechanics in which the metallic Noise and metallic bass rumbles from Leak, Granite (Tzu Ni 目) return making for a great sonic continuity between both versions on Isonautics Remixed. Endearing in the simplicity of some of the sound manipulations and featuring some fun creative sculpting of the tonal elements from the original piece it’s one of the most playful but still equally immersive pieces on the remix album. Granite (swivelized chance remix) afterward follows up from Tzu Ni’s piece with most of the same recognisable elements but this time turned into a lovely short lo-fi Glitch piece. Most of the piece feels like listening to a separate part of machinery on the ship doing its work but with more a wooden like quality to it in terms of texture. swivelized has made the high pitched synth bits especially prominent in his version making for a bit more of a steampunk style to the piece as it ticks along in a sped-up pendulum like fashion. A nice detail of the piece is that while it’s quite lo-fi (using a bitrate of only 96 kbps) you can still hear some of the hiss from the samples in the piece especially as the machinery gets turned off at the end, as it were. A sweet little piece of sonic engineering. Afterwards in Silent Quarries (faithful remix) things get glitched up even more as our ship’s engine has suddenly received a big increased in speed. Through rapid twirling, stuttering and scratching cuts of the original stems from Silent Quarries we find ourselves in a richly detailed rush of speed in which technical mechanics fly around us, mixed with an icy seasoning of bits of water as well as bumpy fuzzy plunderphonics manipulations of music samples like the music playing on the radio owned by own of the crew members gets all tripped up by the sudden speed of the ship. Through all the twirling circular shaped speed chaos, faithful does manage to build a simple but curiously retro sounding melody made of crunchy pitched samples which builds towards a beat-lacking last section that moves from dishwasher like manipulations of ethereal choir vocals to crystallised chopped vocals mapping out a pretty Grime like melody backed by squelchy sound manipulations of breath. The inspired and skilful sample chopping in the piece makes for a very immersive and richly detailed sonic image in this piece with great care for space in the stereo image helping to make it sound like music to dive into. Final piece Home of Depths (Adum Brate remix) closes out things with a both calming and eerie mixture of music sample manipulations and spooky foreboding background ambience. The music samples themselves are from what sounds like a slow piece of Country music which is looped, chopped and pitched in a quite lo-fi and bit crushed manner making the piece sound a bit like a tape manipulation experiment featured on an 80’s cassette tape part of the underground tape scene. The piece feels like we’ve entered the hut of the captain of the ship and are now lazing on his couch whilst a radio is playing music that makes him feel like home, the modulation and overblown quality of the music sample manipulation seems to suggest he’s falling into a soft slumber as the music distorts in his mind and eventually fades away. The eerie distorted dark ambience in the background reveals unsettling and dark things happening in other parts of the ship however, referencing previous imagery we saw and thereby rounding off Isonautics Remixed quite well. I award this remix album a Polar Vision at the frequency of going on a wild journey on a ship that at times is shaken wildly by storm and diving into the minds of the crew members as we explore the mechanical workings of the ship, melancholic memories and dream like impressions of memories and the mysterious and ominously changing nature of the ocean around them. Combined with the dark coloured (and original album referencing) cover artwork which depicts the multi-layered surreal listening experience quite well through its mixture of organic and schematic mechanical imagery Isonautics Remixed is a strongly recommended remix album. This is a great listen for fans of surreal experimental music, Deconstructed Club, the more Sound Art based approach of Noise, contemporary digital Plunderphonics manipulations as well as cinematic underground music with a great and deep sense of mystery through aural suggestion and creative usage of concrete sounds. Definitely check Isonautics Remixed out.
You can download Isonautics Remixed in MP3 form through the direct link from Quantum Natives here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/t0xle3bh3ogmkhx/Crown_Shyness_-Isonautics_Remixed%2528QNRX024%2529.zip/file