The Stills

Just as Dalek's releases have been a difficult fit into hip-hop's now increasingly experimental flow, this first solo album by their turntablist Hsi-Chang Lin inhabits a twilight world of half-beats and noise. The bold affirmation that the album was "created using only Technics 1200s and an array of effects pedals," is half-misleading taken in the context of a genre where artists like Christian Marclay and Martin Tétreault often generate works using vinyl-free turntable sources. Instead with Remains we have layers and layers of distressed vinyl loops often drenched in static and distortion. Often these are denser, but not unlike the darkly menacing tracks found behind many Dalek pieces. The emphasis on strong beats is stripped away, putting more attention on the phased syncopation of multiple loops and smaller details of noise: bell tones, drowned vocal passages, muted woodwinds. The most abrasive tracks resemble the metallic echo chamber workouts of noise artists like Knurl or M.S.B.R., while the quieter, more delicate passages carry echoes of early illbient released by DJ Spooky or more current works by Janek Schaefer and Philip Jeck. The disc's added bonus is a video mix of three short black & white films by Todd Boebel, blending archival footage of a NYC tickertape parade and more exotic goings-on in Myanmar and Angkor.