We Can and We Must Man Alive
Steve Reich’s explorations of repetition and shattered phonemes continue to copy and paste through electronic […]
Steve Reich’s explorations of repetition and shattered phonemes continue to copy and paste through electronic music’s history, influencing and looming over figures from the original analog technonauts to today’s Logic jocks. We Can and We Must make no bones about their debt to Reich, guiding their two-man rig of hacked technology through five cutup journeys from the art house to the modern sample library. “Phooey” exposes raw audiotape to molten guitar, “Blow Up Gigue” lurches from Amon Tobin-ish piano cuts to loopy, ’70s atmospherics and Funkadelic guitar, and “Anthem” wraps it up in an endless analogue synthesizer freak-out. Chase the freak loops with a DVD of inventively trippy low-budget videos and repeat, tweak, repeat.