Low and Behold
Sculpture rather than clubland informs the practice of Dusseldorf’s Detlef Weinrich aka Tolouse Low Trax. Here, Spice Route ruminates on his importance before looking at five of Weinrich’s most memorable remixes…
French sculptor Georges Braques once mused that “with age, art and life become one”. Such synergy of art and life is true for fellow sculptor turned producer/DJ Tolouse Low Trax aka Detlef Weinrich. Take a glance at the Dusseldorf denizen’s Instagram and one is met with evidence of an artist's life; an exotic yet elusive image bank full of noirish strangers, mysterious trinkets, and tantalising glimpses at the man behind the music. None of the cliches of the INSTA DJ in sight in Weinrich’s gallery of the self. Meaning is defined by absence.
A similar spirit pervades Weinrich’s music where none of the cheap tricks of EDM are to be found. Built using a spartan arsenal of MPC plus a few synths and effects units, Weinrich constructs mesmerising grooves that have a hip-hop cadence, avant-garde sound palettes, and the repetitive shamanistic qualities of tribal dance rituals. Exercises in poise and precision; the often bone dry rhythmic elements of a track seem to lock together in slowly evolving geometric patterns that make your brain smile. The work of a skilled sonic sculpture rather than a fame-hungry banger merchant.
To my mind, Weinrich’s work as a remixer is even more startling than his original productions and over a nearly 20-year remix career, TLT’s signature flourish has been applied to over 30 different releases. Whilst remixing can often be an opportunity for artists to maximally imprint themselves into the sonic DNA of a track Weinrich, the sculptor, is altogether more circumspect in his approach with elements of the original musical skeleton finely chiseled into curious new shapes. Let us dive in and consider five of Weinrich’s finest carvings……
Noblesse Oblige — The Great Electrifier (Tolouse Low Trax Remix)
I’m a big advocate of the transformative powers of the remix; a Frankenstein process where original stem cells are extracted, harvested and taken into a new host body. Here parts from Noblesse Oblige’s charming cadaver, a five-minute piece of gothic-tinged electro-pop with bluegrass guitar, is taken to the chop shop by Weinrich and given some stark surgery. The tempo is slowed to a creep and the tone imbued with a grinding crepuscular dread. Valerie Renay’s vocal is rendered as a disembodied series of reverb-drenched non-sequiturs and intonations, sitting atop a menacing tangle of percussive squelches and burbles with only some light relief, courtesy of delicate cloud bursts of reversed guitars that orbit the slow-moving rhythmic juggernaut.
Pitch — What Am I Gonna Do For Fun (Tolouse Low Trax Remix)
Pitch was a short lived project issued by the enigmatic NYC trio of Stuart Sharpe, Marc Canter and Gee Gillespie. Their sole release come out on the similarly short spanned On/Off Records in 1982 and paired a quirky minimal synth pop number on the a-side entitled ‘What Am I Gonna Do For Fun’ with a more expansive, although more conventional sounding, punk funk suite on b-side called “It’s A Quest”. Destined to sink into obscurity the release was gifted a second life after ‘What Am I Gonna Do For Fun’ emerged on one of the shadowy and illicit Light Sounds Dark comps in 2015 and then was subsequently picked up for official reissue by DJ Sundae’s Idle Press in 2016. Despite an age gap of over 30 years one could think of no other person than Weinrich to tackle the process of disassembling the highly unique source material from Pitch’s original. Taking his sonic chisel to the original five-minute track Weinrich teases out fractal rhythmic elements that stumble into view over a slow evolving seven-minute mini-drama of hypnotic kraut brain fudge.
Wolf Muller & Cass — Glade Runner (Tolouse Low Trax Remix)
Dub, according to Coldcut, should be considered a verb that denotes the task of creating space. Whilst it’s difficult to pin down the exact features in the TLT sound it’s very clear that there is a healthy respect for the dub production ethos, especially the tendency to minimise rather than maximise, a preponderance to make space rather than fill it. Taken from the 2016 mini-LP by German duo Wolf Muller & Cass, the original is a shimmering piece of downtempo bliss with iridescent synth lines cascading over tropical hillocks percussion and bird song. TLT blasts away at the panorama of the original and creates a narrowly focused, propulsive rework. Built around a cavernous bass repeating bass tone over which a characteristic TLT rhythmic endoskeleton of tones and squelches slowly propel and intermingle with a dubbed out melodica line extracted from the original.
Akis — Into The Light (Tolouse Low Trax Remix)
Akis Daoutis’s new age fusion stairway to heaven “Into The Light” was initially released in 1990 on an album of the same name. Over nearly 10 minutes the track patiently builds in intensity before a sudden and dramatic fade. Enlisted by reissue label Into the Light Weinrich performs microsurgery on the widescreen new age beauty. The lush synth washes are fractalised and reassembled. The layers of percussion are stripped back and welded into the strange geometry that can only exist on a TLT composition. The stairway to heaven is instead transformed in to Penrose stairs.
VoX LoW — It’s Rejuvenation (Tolouse Low Trax Version)
Vox Low’s motorik synth-rock original “Rejuvenation” with its big and brooding bass-line and wailing synths give hints of a rockist bombast but thankfully never indulges too far in Keith Emerson pyrotechnics. Weinrich’s remix rewires this energy to fit his own laconic template. Much like Hirst’s “The Physical Impossibility….” which sees the brute power and menace of a tiger shark rendered in perpetuity the remix takes the vitality of the band's original stems and steeps them in formaldehyde. Thus the kinetic force of the original becomes a more elliptical proposition; synths more restrained, bass clipped to a tense rhythmic judder and real drums supplanted with electronic counterfeits. Programmed restraint gives space to the original vocals from which Weinrich loops chanted refrains. The overall effects leave when one in a state of glorious disconnect — akin to being heavily ketamised whilst listening to ESG at half speed.
To have a uniquely identifiable artistic style in contemporary music is increasingly rare. Whilst there has been a healthy crop of new producers who have started to pay homage to the Dusseldorf sound Weinrich will always be, in my eyes, the original sonic sculptor-not to be imitated only highly rated.
Weinrich’s 4th studio album, Jumping Dead Leafs is due for release later this month on Bureau B — Preview / Buy Here
