Last we heard from Keith Fullerton Whitman (known to Google as Keith Fullertom Whitman), he posted 12 hours of his Greatest Hits for free on SoundCloud, a massive proto-vaporwave/-eccojam experiment to combat insomnia through “time-/gain-based processes.” However, his latest release, a split 12-inch with Belgian artist Floris Vanhoof, sees KFW wielding an analog synth for a more accessible, beat-driven approach.
Electronic dance isn’t completely unprecedented for KFW, but the sort of wide-eyed, linear exploration on “Automatic Drums with Melody” has a more compressed range that’s not exactly suited for the dance floor, a reflection of both his gear and his minimalist approach to this split. And, in contrast to some of his more aggressive or subdued pieces, it’s also tonally light-hearted, dealing less with timbre and more with rhythm. It’s not until toward the end of the track when noise slowly creeps into the mix, overtaking the rhythmic trajectory and pushing the track into a less temporally-dependent field. The moment is brief, and is best thought of as a way to extinguish the pulse rather than enact its own narrative purpose, but it’s an area in which KFW is clearly comfortable with his synthetic experiments.
You can hear the rest of KFW’s split with Floris Vanhoof on June 1, courtesy of Shelter Press (one of C Monster’s favorite labels!), a Paris-/Brussels-based publishing company founded in 2011 by graphic designer/publisher Bartolomé Sanson and TMT favorite Felicia Atkinson/Je Suis Le Petit Chevalier. The 38-minute, 5-track split will be pressed onto 180g vinyl with silkscreened artwork by Hannah Giese, in an edition of 400. Get on it.
• Keith Fullerton Whitman: http://www.keithfullertonwhitman.com
• Shelter Press: http://www.shelter-press.com
• Mimaroglu: http://www.mimaroglumusicsales.com
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