Robag Wruhme: Wuppdeckmischmampflow

Robag Wruhme
Wuppdeckmischmampflow
Kompakt

Wuppdeckmischmampflow is ethereal and earthen, often at the same time. It leads off with the beatless, warm, overlapping strings of Daniel Norbury’s “Speak, Memory”, a kind of 21st century classical tone poem that could have scored one of David Gordon Green’s early films. Before long he’s mixing in the lite jazz touches of Guillaume & the Coutu Dumonts’ “Odyssee” and Trentemøller’s ultra minimalist, shuffling, glitchy squeaks in the same breath.

There’s tons of layering in Robag Wruhme’s unpronounceable Kompakt mixtape, including some tracks that feature two or three songs apiece. Using miniature remnants of Ricardo Villalobos’s “Dexter” over three tracks or the residue of unreleased Wruhme bits elsewhere feels a bit like cheating, an attempt to pass off parlor tricks as master wizardry. Indeed, one doubled cut is only 48 seconds long. Yet it’s clear that Wruhme is looking not to stupefy, but to create a personal journal with a series of small scraps. As the elegant bounce of the aforementioned “Dexter” indicates, these aren’t numbers that are 100 percent of-the-minute, though the tender fog of 2010 giants Pantha du Prince (not featured) and Four Tet (contributing “Angel Echoes”) bears marking throughout. Instead, these tracks expound profound love affairs on the part of the DJ, bonds so deep that they tangle together at the axis of recollection.

RATING 7 / 10