Taylor Deupree’s is not a name one immediately associates with remixes. The founder of 12k Records, he has a singular vision that manifests itself in solo records and occasional collaborations and, through 12k, his support of like-minded musicians. But hearing his take on Kodomo’s “Endless Waves,” the correlation between his own work and remixing makes perfect sense. So much of Deupree’s music released under his own name is about processing something pre-existing, source material, often field recordings and the pure tones of standalone acoustic instruments making their way through his equipment, ultimately yielding something more akin to erasure than accrual. That is exactly what he does with the Kodomo piece, etching away the pop-infused original until what we hear are small bits echoed and looped, frayed and otherwise dissected.
And here, for reference, is the original version of Kodomo’s “Endless Waves,” a pulsing, droning piece that wavers between arpeggio momentum and film-score synthesizer atmospherics. The track is from Kodomo’s 2014 album, Patterns & Light. It can be informative to locate the source moments of a remix in the original, a bit like solving a puzzle, and it can be all the more so to locate the source aesthetic — how the first version inspired the approach of the second. Here, at 1:35 into the 2:07-long track, there’s a fleeting moment, a final swell experiencing an elegant torque, just before the piece’s long fade. It has in it a touch of Deupree’s own favor for gently warped wisps.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/kodomo. More from Kodomo, aka Chris Child of Brooklyn, New York, at kodomomusic.com. There are two other remixes in the series, by Kodacrome and Allies for Everyone.