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Exlplorers_We

Richard Heineman Jr. | Highland Park, Illinois United States | 06/16/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Explorers_We is the Sgt. Pepper of glitchwerks; it's a totally considered statement, which holds together from start to finish. It's the first glitchwerk masterpiece. The more you listen to it, the better it gets.
There's a strong sense of narrative here-- 60 tracks, each one minute long, begin almost silently, but by five minutes into the disc, small machine-like whirs appear, building up into sensous overtones. About 20 minutes in, speeded-up vocal samples join, wrapped in warm analog musique-concrete whooshes. The middle section sounds completely psychedelic, directly referencing George Martin's 60s studio experiments. Digital clicks fuse with sampled voices to form fantastic polyrhythms which take their cue from African drumming (a tip of the hat to Steve Reich's Drumming and "It's Gonna Rain"). The disc finishes out by using a series of self-reflexive one second media clips from game shows, applause, commercials. 'Explorers_We' has been called "a sinewave massacre" by one of the band members, and it is a fitting description of this sixty minute long, continuous track of electronic sound manipulations. Throughout the program, index points have been placed at sixty second intervals, making this -- according to one critic -- an extremely suitable disc for random play, looping and home-Djing.
--Warp"