Arche-Fossil, the fourth album by Wind Atlas, appeared in the worst moment of a world health crisis that completely frustrated the possibilities of presenting and promoting the album live, forcing the band, like so many others, to cancel all concerts until further notice. This forced hiatus left room to start working on a remixes album they had planned for later on.
In the last few years, Wind Atlas has evolved and mutated, going from a post punk and ethereal rock band, heir to the 4AD sound, to becoming a quartet with an increasingly electronic, unclassifiable and personal sound that mixes post-industrial landscapes with Mediterranean music, post punk, noise and an infinity of other sounds from their inexhaustible palette. In Arche-Fossil, they definitely embrace electronics and dedicate most of their efforts to producing the album themselves.
During the compositional process, the songs change constantly until they find an almost definitive version for the album. Almost because as they work on them, they create parallel realities in which the songs exist in other ways. It is at this point that they begin to reflect on the idea that songs are something alive, something that exists differently in the minds of those who create them, but also those who listen to them. The idea of reworking the songs and contemplating the potential reinterpretations of their listeners is something that has increasingly interested the band, as they have already started to explore this path with their previous album An Edible Body and the subsequent En La Cruz remixes 12”. Now the band takes a bigger step.
Arche-Fossil (Remixes) features remixes by some of Cønjuntø Vacíø’s label classics acts as well as some interesting Spanish and international names. The selection is heterogeneous: Kenji Komine (Japan), under his LSTNGT moniker, presents a sad trance version of Days of Sadness; Ketamine Vault (Barcelona) and Otro (Valencia) offer a more abstract versions of Hunger and Dos Ojos. Ricardo Remedio (Portugal), under his alias RR, works again with Wind Atlas presenting two epic and cinematographic remixes of Oceanic Sexuality and Nada. Seltar (Barcelona), new a.k.a. of producer Olaf Blanch, positions himself as an interesting figure in the new scene of drum’n’bass and breakcore with a more experimental cut with a magnificent remix. Plastic Ivy (US) adds a melancholic and ethereal guitar sound to Dos Ojos and MT Formula (Barcelona) puts the point of roughness and darkness that rounds out the album.
Arche-Fossil (Remixes) works as a perfect appendage to Arche-Fossil, an album that asks questions and opens up to multiple reinterpretations: an album that is a start rather than a conclusion and refuses to be encapsulated and pigeonholed.
credits
released July 3, 2020
Original songs by Wind Atlas.
Artwork by David M. Romero
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