Ricardo Villalobos & Max Loderbauer

Avant-techno veterans Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer (Sun Electric, NSI, Moritz Von Oswald Trio) have been fairly vocal in recent years for their love of the back catalogue of the avant-garde jazz label ECM, so much so that news of them reworking aspects of the discography has been in the air for some time. But few would have expected the results found on Re:ECM, a two-disc, 130-plus-minute dissection of contemporary ECM recordings by Arvo Pärt, Christian Wollumrød and Alexander Knaifel. Unlike Carl Craig & Moritz Von Oswald's 2008 album, ReComposed, which saw the club pioneers remixing the modern classical compositions of Ravel and Mussorgsky, Re:ECM completely dispenses with the more obvious route of blending the source material's rich textures to electronic beats. Instead, what you get is a preservation of the source material's delicate melodic structures being bent and drained through a lush bed of off-kilter loops, all spinning gently out of control. A frequently magical listen and most definitely the most experimental offering in the Ricardo Villalobos catalogue, Re:ECM succeeds so beautifully by preserving the essence of jazz syncopation and rhythm.