We all know what Kassem Mosse sounds like, but have you ever tried to explain to someone what Kassem Mosse sounds like? Sort of impossible, right? Unpeggable by tempo (there’s a good 25-bpm spread between the A and B sides of his seminal Nonplus Recordings release from last year) or by room size (where his backwards-playing FXHE release under real name Gunnar Wendel towers over his intimate Workshop releases) or by genre (his smash “Untitled” on Laid last year could be filed in pretty much any section of the record store), he’s a producer you really can’t say anything definitive about, except that you know KM when you hear him, and his sides are reliably essential. More than most producers we follow, Wendel’s sound is in the eye of the beholder. And if his latest solo outing, a 7″ called “Musical Generics” for his own Mikrodisko label, is any indication, our man wouldn’t want it any other way.
While one side of “Musical Generics” is slow and one side is fast, you could conceivably play either side at whichever speed suits you. (For the purposes of this review, though, I’ll talk about the tracks at the speeds they were probably produced at.) “7am,” skittering around at lightning speed like recently smashed-up subatomic particles, is bass music without bass, or techno without a steady thud impinging on its acceleration. “7pm,” already eying the bedroom even this early in the evening, slinks through your speakers like some kind of Dilla fever-dream. Across both sides, you know you’re listening to KM, but you’re admittedly not quite sure how you know that. To say these tracks are for DJs only is in no way a slight; rather, “Musical Generics” — as appropriate a title for this release as possible — feels like a collaborative project between consumer and producer, a set that’s not quite finished until a jock gets his fingerprints all over the vinyl. While Wendel’s remix work (to my ears, and to my slight disappointment) has started to sound like Kassem Mosse hunkering down into peggability, this solo outing reveals a producer still very much open to interpretation.
Bad ass release!