Cory Strand — Paris, Do You Speak French?

Paris, Do You Speak French? once again finds this highly proflic noise-maker & drone-creator retooling & morphing modern female pop fare into often lengthy experimental sound-scapes, which move between ambience & dense noise-craft. The subject of this multi disc set(5 CDR’s & 2 data DVD’s) is the work of Paris Hilton- the infamous American socialite, actress and pop star.

The main 5 CDRs of this set focuses in on manipulating & radical remixing just one track the hedonistic 'n' dancey pop of “Good Time”, which was released as a single in early October 2013. It was meant to have been Hilton’s big come back after been away from the music side of things for sometime, but unfortunately it didn’t do particularly well only getting to 18 in the US chart. The song it's self is a fairly sleazy yet memorable hit of dance focused electro-pop with guest vocal spot from New Orleans rapper Lil Wayne.

The 2 data DVD’s take in an hour & a half  DJ set from Miss Hilton, and a hour & a half  radical remix from Mr Strand of said set. 

As one would expect from Altar of Waste the packaging is something fairly elaborate & classy for an underground release.  All but one of the discs come in their own DVD cases- these each takes in double  side color coves   featuring various stills from the songs video of (mainly) Ms Hilton. With the whole set coming in a pink painted box which features a leopard skin print bottom lining.

Each of the four main discs takes in between three & four tracks a piece, and each of these last between 11 to a whopping 30 plus mintues. I found the release started off a little underwhelming with the first disc rather offer up just passable re-morphs, but from disc two onward the quality seemed to go up, and featured here was some of Strands most rewarding work.  I won’t go into disc by disc/ track by track reviews here, but instead touch down on some of my favorite moments. 

So first of those is ‘favorite moments’ come in the form of  disc two’s  “Tomorrow Isn’t Promised/Tonights Is All We Got”- the first half of the piece finds Strand reducing back the original tracks chours to a stripped back yet lush ‘n’ looped mix of harmonic ambient synth hover ‘n’ subtle noise drone, which is topped off with the appealing & locked mantra of Hilton’s vocals. At around the 13th minute mark a locked & battering black metal like drum rhythm is added on top of the original elements, and this makes for a surprising yet highly effective addition, and it really  pulls you deeper & deeper into the tracks already hypnotic pull.

Next is “Love Is Such a Science”- the first track on disc three, which also is one of the shorter moments here at  11.52 minute mark. Here Strand completely obliterates  any of the tracks original elements, and goes for searing ‘n’ intense mixture of grinding ‘n’ battering low-end walled noise tumble, which is edged with looped & piecing high-end noise grind.

Lastly we have Disc fours first track "Good Times( Washed Out In Cannes Remix)". This 36 minute piece stretchers out the originally track into an achingly beautiful & majestically  yet glitch ebbed ambient sweep of slurred harmonic textures, juddering & jittering vocal textures, and hovering yet caught string like swoons created by the stretched out techno elements.  As I mention above these three discs are consistent through-out, so the tracks mentioned here are my favourite moments- but the rest of them are worthy too.

The 5th & finally CDR takes in a single just of hour track entitled “Lost In Paris”-  it reduces Good Times down to a almost unrecognizable ambient soup of hazed ‘n’ washed-out chiming gamelan sweeps & golden ambient dwells- all told it’s a most rewarding long form piece. This disc comes in a colour PC printed slip sleeve, which takes in yet another picture of Ms Hilton

So next we move onto the two data DVD’s, and first of these features a DJ Set from Ms Hilton that was recorded in  Ibiza, and I’m afraid to say this did little or nothing for me. It finds her offering up a set that brings together her own work with a selection of fairly standard dance pop fare- really the disc is only useful to hear how much Strand has altered the material for his length remix.

So lastly we have the 2nd DVD which takes in Strand remix Heart Over Ibiza. This  is a thick & all-engulfing just over one & a half hour track that moves from dense psychedelic washers of rich & harmonic drone matter, through to pummelling ‘n’ turning walls of juddering, billowing & searing noise. On the whole it remains hypotonic & shifting through-out, and thankful you can only make out just subtle traces of the original source material.

So for the majority of this releases lenghty runtime Strand pulls off another rewarding, varied & consistent collection of tracks sourced from seemingly throw-away pop fare. As one would image with such a large set this was hellish ltd- coming in a edition of just 10 hand number copies, which have long disappeared. So lets hope at some point Stand reissues some of the more effective moments here(either digital or physical) because there is some great work on display here.