rkss: dj tools

Contemporary computer musician Robin Buckley, aka rkss, reassembles mainstream EDM sample packs on the killer, unconventional DJ Tools LP for Lee Gamble's UIQ. Manipulating off-the-shelf sounds from "EDM Kicks Vol.1" through various processing techniques, rkss explores the politics and aesthetics of club culture, technology, and queerness by radically altering these preconceived, "purpose-built" blocks of sound from their original use, and rendering them in a spectrum of non-standard, ambiguous designs that both highlight, abstract, and reimagine the samples' social function. The result is nine hyper-colorful, unpredictable, and uniquely engaging tracks that metaphorically connote queer dynamics, employing the user-oblivious potential of computer software to shape a form of dance music that insightfully reflects and celebrates rkss's difference within the flux of today's social spaces. In other words, it's a music very much of, and for, its times, crucially in step with current redefinitions of musical boundaries and identity politics. In rkss' own words: "DJ Tools was recorded at a turning point for me as an artist and person as I came into the aesthetic and social limitations I was finding in contemporary dance culture. I started to change how I thought about myself as an artist in terms of changing the way I created music, instead of writing the music at home and later arranging it for the club, I started writing music for live performance first. I wanted to be able to arrange these pieces/excerpts/sketches live. I was beginning to re-arrange how I thought about my gender/self and placing, exploring and finding the language to point to my sense of difference as a rans person. DJ Tools was where I began to formulate my own relationship to club culture as a mostly sober, transgender person, what version of club music did I want to engage with in that social space... Fluid, dynamic and reacting to audience. Highlighting the social. Sharing & connecting through my difference rather than erasing it." RIYL: Florian Hecker, Rian Treanor, Jesse Osborne-Lanthier, V/Vm, Evol, Errorsmith, Theo Burt. Master and vinyl cut by Matt Colton at Alchemy.