- In anticipation of their forthcoming full-length Burn The Land & Boil The Oceans, Principles Of Geometry invite Joakim, Krikor and Pilooski to remix three of the album's tracks. The French group has long plied an unusual fusion of Balearic disco and jittery, glitch-inspired tropes, and the press release promises that the album will "redefine what we thought IDM was." Here, though, EBM seems to be the more relevant acronym. Joakim's tape edit of "LA" opens with a regal, drawn-out synthesizer fanfare before settling into a chunky electro-disco groove; funky robot basslines and growling vocoders faintly recall a punkier Daft Punk, or even, given the live drumming, the Bay Area's original synth punk band, The Units.
Pilooski's "ISM" edit uses similar sounds—spongy, pliant synthesizers and loud, loose rock drumming; the latter, panned hard to the left and draped in natural reverb, leaves you with the feeling of crouching in a corner of a practice space where one side of the room has been hung with moving blankets. It's a hypnotic, introverted grind of a track, worrying away at a minor-key arpeggio over a groove that can't decide whether it's D.C. go-go or motorik Krautrock. My favorite is Krikor's "Carbon Cowboy": the plodding 4/4 groove and minor-key bass arpeggio are as sinister as they are sensual, especially when paired with a hissing growl reminiscent of Skinny Puppy; a bridge straight out of Depeche Mode's Violator is the blood-colored icing on the cake.
TracklistA L.A (Joakim Tape Edit)
B1 ISM (Pilooski Edit)
B2 Carbon Cowboy (Krikor Edit)