Bit Shifter
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Brooklyn NY US

So! Finally out today is the first of the Connections series of remix releases, celebrating synthpunk pioneers The Units, featuring a remix I did of their track "Warm Moving Bodies." Which you can hear here at Soundcloud.

The Units were part of the San Francisco punk movement in the late '70s and early '80s, and (in my view) easily 20 years ahead of their time, abandoning rock conventions & adopting synthesizers while most of the punk movement was just kicking off its love affair with the guitar, and creating subversive multimedia/audiovisual performances well before the advent of digital editing technology. These guys were absolute groundbreakers in my view and so I'm pretty effing excited to have been able to be a part of this remix project.

The product rollout is totally confusing — a main 36-track album, Connections (in digital & physical editions), flanked by what will be an ongoing series of digital track-specific EPs.

Long story short, my remix is available as part of these two products only:
• Connections 36-track 3xCD album + download card
Clone.NL exclusive

• Connections (Warm Moving Bodies — The Remixes) 12-track digital EP
Beatport · Juno · Boomkat


For the curious, here's more about The Units:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Units
http://synthpunk.org/units/


And here's some cover art!!!!111

_______________________________________


The Units: Connections
OPCM LTD CD 002 · Opilec Music
36-track digital album (does not include my remix .___. )
36-track 3xCD album, with download card for 16 bonus tracks (includes my remix ^___^ )
↳ Clone.NL

_______________________________________


The Units: Connections (Warm Moving Bodies — The Remixes)
OPCM UN EP 10-2 · Opilec Music
12-track digital EP (includes my remix ^___^ )
↳ Beatport · Juno · Boomkat

Battle Lava
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awesome. will check it out.

Subway Sonicbeat
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Brazil

Congrats Mr Shifter! Listend to a bit of the other mixes and yours is the best, as far as i listened.

Bit Shifter
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Brooklyn NY US

Hey thanks Kurt. I think the rest of the remixers are more "pro" as a whole -- they all seem to have a grasp on understatement, subtlety, nuance and atmosphere. Whereas I, unburdened by any such refinements, prefer to crash around noisily and tastelessly. But I'm glad it's to your liking regardless. \o/

Nestrogen
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Winter Haven, FL
Bit Shifter wrote:

I think the rest of the remixers are more "pro" as a whole -- they all seem to have a grasp on understatement, subtlety, nuance and atmosphere. Whereas I, unburdened by any such refinements, prefer to crash around noisily and tastelessly.

And that is why I love you. Your tunes are pretty swell too!

PULSELOOPER
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São Paulo, Brazil

Like Kurt, I think the Shifter mix is the coolest. But I really like the others as well. Hell, The Units is a band I only knew by name. Gonna definitely check them out!

Subway Sonicbeat
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Brazil

Units is better than Our Daughters Wedding.

And I think being "pro" in a compilation about Units is pretty pointless.
Hell, it was punk with synths. No atmosphere, no nuances, whatever. It was a fun and noisy band, why would you try to make it sound better? Like Devo, IMO.

But I expected to hear Mr Shifter singing.

This is my favorite:

Last edited by Subway Sonicbeat (Aug 3, 2011 12:27 pm)

Bit Shifter
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Brooklyn NY US

There's a pretty interesting interview here with Scott Ryser of the Units, where he talks about the similarities between the philosophies and motivations of early punk culture and some segments of European DJ culture at the time. I also hadn't realized that the Units' records had been adopted early on by European DJs & used in that context in transformative ways. Kind of interesting.

Scott Ryser wrote:

I love the idea of remixes. It’s a very punk idea to me. I love the idea of reconfiguring art and technology and taking it to places that it wasn’t intended to go.

The people that were the first to start re-mixing The Units were actually some of the cornerstone trailblazers of the Italo Disco scene way back around 1980. The legendary Italian Cosmic DJ Daniele Baldelli started re-working our songs way back in 1979 and the early 80s and was responsible for giving us an audience in Italy.

This is very interesting to me, because while in the USA, the punk scene that the Units were part of in the late 70s was rebelling against the conformity and regimentation of disco, some forward thinking Italian DJs were taking a very a different approach… instead of killing disco with a new genre of music, they just punked-up disco.

In the early 80s, Baldelli would take a disco dance song, but play it at the wrong speed and then add weird space effects to it. He’s got to be one of the pioneers of the mashup too. Playing slowed down Units songs on top of contemporary disco. His style became so popular in Italy that people started putting out 12” bootleg records of Units songs “to be played at slow speed”, with the instructions written right on the record label. I can’t help but laugh when I hear them. My voice sounds like Darth Vader from Star Wars. It’s great.

And yeah, "High Pressure Days" is one of my favorite tracks.

Subway Sonicbeat
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Brazil

Oh, this is nice. Regardless, is a grumpy opnion that of mine and I enjoyed the other songs. I'm just biased.

Bit Shifter
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Brooklyn NY US

No, I understand where you're coming from. Not trying to change your mind. I'd be lying if I said I loved a lot of the other remixes -- they tend to be a little bit outside of what I usually like to listen to, stylistically.