jonathan scherk & daniel majer: it's counterpart

Faitiche welcomes two young artists from Canada; Jonathan Scherk and Daniel Majer hail from the post-rock and experimental scene in Vancouver, where they shared a studio for several years. In artistic terms, too, there is a surprising coherence: on It's Counterpart, their solo work naturally blends to create a joint album, making it hard to distinguish between their contributions. Majer describes his part as a shadow-like reflection to Scherk's brightly meandering collages. The album's title refers to this: It's Counterpart presents two solo artists who have met their match in one another. Scherk and Majer produce contemporary sound collages on samplers, laptops etc. using raw material drawn from YouTube videos, field recordings, cassettes, and LPs from the dollar bin -- the kind of rightly forgotten obscurities that have long since lost their audience, if they ever had one. In the hands of Scherk and Majer, they become abstract sound objects. The two artists don't concern themselves with the material's original context -- the sound's character is most important. This sets them apart from other collage artists. Their work might be called a contemporary upgrade of the classic tape collage: here, channeling a wealth of information is the main focus. Are these collages that trigger neither associations nor contexts? Au contraire! It's Counterpart is like an overheated centrifuge whose spinning extracts and joins together all of the harmonies ever pressed on vinyl. Melodies run amok. Includes download code.