Lopatin's music has spanned genres and mediums, with the composer filling various roles, but its through line is its sense of the uncanny and Lopatin's understanding of how warping sonic textures can tap into surreality.
When people talk about the quintessential music of early 2000s New York, it's often scuzzy new rock bands like The Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the burgeoning dance-punk scene led by LCD Soundsystem, or the city's ever-booming hip hop movement. But there's arguably one album that in its own quietly revolutionary way, may just be the most significant work of that city's fertile period: Basinski's The Disintegration Loops.
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Laurie Spiegel for the site. As preparation for the interview, I spent a lot of time over the last couple of weeks revisiting Spiegel's records, most notably The Expanding Universe, her 1980 masterpiece that blends synth experimentalism with early examples of what would eventually be called ambient music, and algorithmic composition techniques. It's a marvel that sounds both nostalgic and cutting-edge at the same time.
I can feel my ears extending, hind legs protruding, fluffy tail drooping down; I have an uncontrollable urge to gnaw with my front teeth and binky (excited jump). I've traversed so many rabbit holes I myself seem to be transforming into a bunny. Throughout the year, I've thought that maybe covering a certain amount of scenes and trends would unlock some secret key to the universe-a final solid bottom, a cultural bedrock.
Landing somewhere between composer William Basinski's Disintegration Loops and DJ Screw's chopped'n'screwed production style, Desaceleradas slows the shaker-rattling, synth syncopations of cumbia rebajada into unrecognisable ambient territory. La Ronda y el Sonidero and Vinilos Trasnacionales contain hints of the signature cumbia shuffle and twanging synth melody, but Beatriz's added tape hiss, reverb and melodic warping transform the style into an eerie, ethereal soundworld of nightmare fairground music and yearning drones.
"Listening to the track through headphones, I could feel my usually agitated pulse steady itself, mirroring the music's rhythm-calming me even as it sparked me to attention."