This album confuses the hell out of me. Granted, I’m easily confused, but a remix of an entire album? (Didn’t Colour Me Badd and Paula Abdul teach today’s artists anything? Will this become the Next Bigg Thang? Was Stowaway — the album Solter remixed to create Canonic — in desperate need of a complete re-working? Why are the song titles from Canonic completely different from those of Stowaway?) SHIT, SON OF A BITCH, I have NO CLUE what’s going on goddamnit!!?!
And so it goes. I figure if I just evaluate this cute lil’ shih tzu as if it were an album unto itself — which it pretty much is anyway — I’ll be able to get out of this review without staying at the dingy TMT headquarters all fuckin’ day. Besides, my lady’s makin’ shrimp with Ramen noodles tonight. Classy! But I digress; this album is about as mechanical as it gets, and there’s a catch: all of the sounds found within this nutz ’n’ boltz concoction were originally recorded as part of Stowaway. In layman’s terms, there were no new dressings added to this beat salad; it’s simply a revision. DAMN, I thought I was past analyzing the inner workings of this utter curio, but I guess not. Thing is, the formation of Canonic is inseparable from the actual music it disseminates. I’m not even sure why, it just is ... I suppose because Canonic is so fractured, random and, yes, occasionally enticing that it would have to be a remix-er rather than an original work.
As fascinating as many of Solter’s interpretations were to me at first, I find myself indifferent in the long-run. He managed to forge a sound that turns heads, but once you focus on Canonic for a while you realize it’s no more than a mirage, albeit one that catches the ear. For while he proves skillful in his tweaking of an assortment of set-in-stone sounds, as a complete work these tracks slip in and out of consciousness too much to drift into deep R.E.M. It’s as if he’s trying so hard to make his product wholly different from the original that he lost sight of the listener’s right to not be jerked through harrowing slices of fuzz, plunk, plop, fizz and crash.
Yes, this album smashed my head like a window, but I’ve found myself unable to pick up the pieces since then. Maybe I’m just not ready for this shit; I’m sure there are Autechre fans somewhere that’ll hail this as the next step forward in a digital renaissance. I don’t, though it is compelling how disparate Canonic is from its source material. A concept can only take you so far, though...
More about: Scott Solter
