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Ritmo Sportivo is a young and very promising netlabel from Moscow, responsible thus far for three remarkable albums. Common among the label's organizers and artists is a love for American soul and classic hip-hop recordings, all of which are cut, spliced, and decelerated to the point of being unrecognizable.
The staff at Ritmo describe that Black heritage as a "musical platform" for their experiments, in other words a launchpad into related, though qualitatively different spheres. The result, with justification, is called an "unusual [sonic] atmosphere." Put differently, things "usual" or predictable are radically transformed, especially when the distinct, driven beats of R&B are slowed down to the point of a general "atmosphere," rather than anything noticeably progressive.
Marching bands and dancers are no longer needed: everybody slows down - and is better off playing from a seated position.
Mimicking American urban slang of the '70s, the folks at Ritmo Sportivo declare, in semi-serious tones, their intention to champion "regular dope sounds based on Black music"; this admirable goal will be pursued by "people who really love that sh*t." Such terms coming from the streets of Moscow in 2010 may sound risible, but the level of affection here is very infectious. This reemployment of bold US terminology appears throughout the label's brief PR materials, especially with regard to a new release by Moscow artist Oh!Dee.
"What would happen if love were combined with beats? Ritmo Sportivo provides the answer. One of Russia's most interesting hip-hop producers - Oh!Dee - gives us some love for his first beat tape. It's sometimes clean, sometimes dirty. Sometimes romantic, sometimes not! If you're ready, the curtain will soon go up..."
Old world romance - and the songs thereof - are barely visible through a fog of techno-trickery; the original sounds and words are only just recognizable.
Oh!Dee himself credits James Brown, The Wu-Tang Clan, Stone's Throw Records, Moscow colleague Malefique, hip-hop producer 9th Wonder, and California's Flying Lotus among his influences. His new eponymous recording, building on that heritage, is now available for downloading; it consists of sixteen tracks with a total running time of twenty-three minutes. Very rapid changes are made to slowly delivered lyrics. We hear, for example, Nat King Cole's sugary vocals subjected to a severe edit, especially the refrain: "Smile, though you heart is aching; smile, even though it's breaking."
Smile, though you heart is aching; smile, even though it's breaking
This famous celebration of insistent jollity, come what may, is itself repeated - over and over.
There's an occasional gesture in the opposite direction - Lynyrd Skynyrd's "I Need You," for example, is accelerated to the point of pixie pop - but in essence these are loving, languid attempts to restrain a moment. Refrains and rhythms are held tight and then repeated over and over, allowing Oh!Dee to "smile, even though" the outside world may not be as romantic.
One wonders, even, whether his stage name isn't a related reference to some overdose or "OD" on a treasured R&B tradition. We go round and round his record collection with such frequency that the distance between happy desire and insistent drive starts to look fairly small.
Just like somebody in Wichita, driving again and again to the theater for a cinematic peek at distant, sunny California - a destination they'll never actually reach. Dreaming at home is preferable (and safer) to a soul-destroying road trip westwards.
And indeed, Oh!Dee's page at Vkontakte lists his favorite activity as "killing time" - and his favorite music as anything "that sounds funky." Immobility and dance music occupy the same space - in other words, his romance happily exists in comforting, cyclical patterns.
There's no need to leave the dancefloor, go outside - or get a hiding in the carpark.
A related philosophy sits behind another, equally appealing release from Moscow producer OL (Oleg Buianov), published by Error Broadcast. Buianov was born in 1986 and began seriously to study electronic music at the age of sixteen. In time, though, his initial enthusiasm for psychdelia would pass and - under the new moniker of OL - he would begin to work in the slower genres of minimal techno and deep.
These more adult efforts have led to publications in Russia, Spain, and Germany. The record shelves are filling up.
Error Broadcast was responsible for the fine Russian wonky collection last month, which we showcased; that, too, was based on a sense of community among artists who had deliberately manipulated or manhandled the rhythmic structure of their source material. Of OL's buckled instrumentals, we now hear: "There's something magic about this music, something lurking behind the polyrhythmic, anfractuous beats that is difficult to put your finger on."
There's something magic about this music, something lurking behind the polyrhythmic, anfractuous beats...
The twists and turns of OL's release - suitably entitled "Random Phrase" - are a dramtic avoidance of logical progression. They validate repetition and randomness over predictable progress. Oh!Dee's choice of some very familiar R&B or soul tracks makes that avoidance even clearer: we, as listeners, have expectations as his samples ring forth from canonical songs - yet those sound clips are always cut off, looped, or slowed down. We never reach our expected destination, be it a familiar chorus or the end of a world-famous verse.
We move within these songs: we just don't move forward. Once again, we hide away in cyclical patterns, since the world outside the studio does not look that appealing. Isolation and cherished ideals go hand in hand. In Buianov's view, dating appears to be an unproductive option, too.
"These tracks on 'Random' Phrase' swim with warm noise, yet there is a starless depth beneath..." That impressionistic phrasing, no matter how vague, does a nice job of summarizing the ways in which sentimental classics of the '60s and '70s are being reedited - i.e., frozen - in order to avoid a rather dark view of the world. Drawing heavily upon minimal and dub-techno trickery, OL creates sounds that have been called "sweet and spacey" (a positive designation!) yet simultaneously "sick and stomach-turning" (negative!).
In fact the main vocal sample we hear on "Random Phrase" comes from a slowed-down male voice declaring "Oh, sh*t!" It's impossible to tell whether he's expressing his pleasure (and is therefore resident on the "sweet" side of the equation) or suffering from a sense of "stomach-turning" movement. After all, the overall tactic of deceleration, applied to these songs, often produces a lurching, slurred sound. It could be a soundtrack to knee-buckling ecstasy, but it could also be head-spinning nausea above a "starless depth."
Heartless actuality makes pleasure-seeking very hard work.
Both of these new, slow releases from Oh!Dee and OL show great dexterity in their romantically incessant reworking of loved yet predictable patterns. Neither of these men wants those patterns to stop. We're reminded of Lars von Trier's 2000 film, "Dancer in the Dark," in which Bjork's character Selma explains how awfully sad she feels at the end of musicals, when a final song marks the end of a story. Why - she is asked - does she always leave the movie theater just before the closing scene?
"Because you just know when it goes really 'big'... and the camera goes, like, out of the roof... and you just know it's going to end. I hate that. I would leave just after the next to last song... and the film would just go on forever."
...you just know it's going to end. I hate that...
A song that is not allowed to end "goes on forever." These new tracks from Oh!Dee and OL play a similar game; they go to great effort in order to keep some sweet, sentimental lyrics alive. The baroque twists and turns needed to save freedom from an inevitable denouement become increasingly disorienting. A slow, chopped, and looped structure can become dizzying.
Losing one's head is a distinct possibility.
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