Cory Strand — Moon Pix: A Reinterpretation

“Moon Pix: A Reinterpretation” finds Minneapolis based Cory Strand offering up another extreme remix/ deconstruction release. And this time he’s focused in on the work of Cat Power(a.k.a. American singer/song writer Chan Marshall), and in particular the projects 1998 album “Moon Pix”- which became a big break-through release for Ms Marshall. Strand’s reinterpretation comes in the form of a three disc CDR set, in which finds him stretching out the albums original 11 tracks to epic lengths.

The original “Moon Pix” album offered up a collection of mournful & morose female singer song-writer fare, which fell somewhere between sombre Us indie rock, stark electric folk & sad core.  For his extreme re-mix/ re-mould of the tracks Strand has stretched & blurred out the original three to five minute tracks into huge eleven to twenty five minute epics. As with much of Strands reinterpretation work you can make out little of the original tracks structure or sound- here he’s stretched each of the eleven tracks into slices of  morose ambience, bleak atmospherics, and melancholic drone drifts.

The first two discs in the set feature four tracks a piece, and the last disc features three tracks. The tracks move from disc ones opening track “American Flag”- which is a twenty minute slice of truly bleak & chilling dark ambience, that finds stripped down & ominous tones drifting  ghost like around each other to create a foreboding & creepy harmonic haze. Through to the slurred ambient dark tonal ebb, flow & bleak rising of disc twos twenty four minute “Back Of Your Head”. Also on discs two is “Moonshiner”- which is a just over sixteen minute slice of hovering, almost doomed regal sounding distanced & murky string drone brood. Through to discs three’s epic twenty seven minute “Cross Bone Style” which mixers together doomed & slowed textural reverberations with deep ‘n’ brooding drone plate shift.

As always with Altar Of Waste titles the artwork & lay-out of the release is worth a mention. The CDRs come in the labels house style clear DVD case, and this features a doubled sided cover- on the front it takes in a wall of identical black & white pictures of Ms Marshall, and inside cover takes in a stark picture of her performing live. Each of the three discs fittingly feature barren moonscape pictures.

So this is another massive & bleak drone/ ambient set from Mr Strand. I found I enjoyed this more in shorter one disc shots, instead of playing the whole thing in one go, because at times the tracks do start to blur & merge into one another( maybe this is the point?). All told it’s another effective release from Mr Strand, though I wouldn’t say if was  my favourite of his more drone based work as it does lack some variation at times.