- On stage, the Wighnomy Brothers are about as thrillingly unpredictable as minimal(ish) techno can be. Check out YouTube for clips of the duo (Gabor Schablitzki and Sören Bodner) in action, back-to-back on the decks, trigger-happy at the controls, curve-ball track selections, slugging hard liquor all the while. They look like a pair of bears, with suspiciously good music taste who’ve ended up in the wrong club. Many of their own frenetic releases point to a morning-after production schedule, all hungover shakes and caffeine jitters, fine in small doses but, as their two Remix Potpourri collections demonstrate, not easy to take en masse. Metawuffmschfelge is their first official mix release, and it’s a fair demonstration of their live approach.
Recorded from turntables, several of them, this fun and scrappy set is a fine antidote to the Hawtin school of digital cleanliness. Over 30 tracks are thrown into this sixty minute session, and we’re seldom presented with individual works. Indeed, the defining style of Metawuffmischfelge seems to be playing numerous records simultaneously and continuously, and seeing what exotic cocktail emerges. It's as though Schablitzki and Bodner are DJing separately, but in synch. The pace is languid, in a woozy deep house kind of way, and the effect of all this is like seeing double, dancing drunk: double kick drums beef up the lower end, hats compete to stay in time, basslines stagger and sway, fading in and out of view. Congas and maracas shimmy beside purely synthetic tones – High Tide's 'Riddim Stick', for instance, comes covered in gasps, blips and squelches from surrounding Becket & Taylor and Andre Crom tracks.
This approach doesn’t always work, though. Lisa Gerrard’s opening croon (their fondness for operatic touches works a treat live) laid over ‘Fed On Youth’ is more Enya-styled world-fusion tastelessness than discordant mishmash. Six minutes in, however, and we're in a whole other world, with False's cold earnestness showered in Latin percussion and sensual mumbling from Mathias Kaden's 'Rhythma'. This segues smoothly into Agoria's Italo bleeps and strings, a rare untampered moment, before Kadebostan's 'Caracas Soul' introduces sentiment and depth. Clipped guitar notes and mournful strings trace an expectant trance arc over eight minutes, and the additions from High Tide, Crom and Ralph Sliwinski add further poignancy.
The latter half follows this path: spacious, emotional techno like what Michael Mayer plays. There's a jazzy detour with Trentmoller & DJ Tom's 'An Evening with Bobi Bros', and the haunting voice returns in Bugge Weseltoft & Sidsel Endresen 'Psalm', but throughout its a pleasantly swampy, thick house chug. As DJ Koze's 'Mariposa' rears its head we know where the Wighnomy's hearts lie, and it's the logical final step. Here, the heft of the original is somewhat dulled with unnecessary clutter, but the final dystopian dread of Machiste's 'Mosca Via' ends on the requisite sour note. Perhaps not the most memorable mix CD you'll hear, Metawuffmischfelge is nonetheless an enjoyably original set, and well worth hearing.
Tracklist
01 Lisa Gerrard - Cometenderness
02 Tadeo - Eclipse
03 Mathias Kaden - Rhythma
04 Agoria - Les violins ivres
05 Beckett & Taylor - Let's Smash Up Our Love
06 High Tide - Riddim Stick
07 Andre Crom - Reiner Wahnsinn
08 Kadebostan - Caracas Soul
09 Ralph Sliwinski - Thatz in my Brain
10 Kreon & Lemos - Nice Day
11 Douglas Greed - Fresh and Clean
12 Stefanik & Tasnadi - Doch
13 Trentemøller & DJ Tom - An evening with bobi bros
14 Sidsel Endresen & Bugge Wesseltoft - Psalm
15 Stewart Walker - Fernbank 91(RobagRMX)
16 DJ Koze - Mariposa
17 Matchiste - Mosca Via