- Kerri Chandler has been an inspiration for European house in the last few years, but whether he cares or not is anybody's guess. Still, on Computer Games Unreleased Expansion Pack 0.2, he continues to build bridges, or at least Deeply Rooted do, with Berghain resident Ben Klock picked as a remixer.
In 2006, when Klock was releasing deathly cold techno on Ostgut-Ton, this collaboration would have been hard to imagine, but these days techno's temperature has risen considerably. Chandler's "For the Next X=1-1000" is a perfect example of the fiery US glow that's got clubs sweating. A cacophony of hard-edged percussion forms a shuffling house beat before a duel of his interplanetary organs. As with all the best Chandler records, it's a one riff triumph. The percs, an exercise in raw precision, skip in and out, giving this track that unmistakable US swing, as a red-hot key sequence is played a hundred different ways. Seems you've got to be rough to play smooth.
On the flip, Klock remixes "Pong," and I guess it's not that surprising that the result comes out sounding a bit like Carl Craig, though not quite as box office. Klock creates an atmosphere that evokes his early productions: It's a little frosty, but with the ghost of an organ lurking and Detroit strings that seem to drone in slow motion. (Even with the added US flavor you'd know this was the producer who brought us "Dead Man Watches the Clock.") It's pensive early morning techno, mapping the dreary fade from summer into autumn with a stoic gravitas.
Tracklist A Pong (Ben Klock Remix)
B For the Next X=1-1000