Shaun Yule, the London producer otherwise known as Rubik, has been on the edges of the experimental electronic scene for a while now, both as a performer – his latest album Tone Poem is his fourth, and as label boss of left-field imprint Domestiv Records, home (at least at some time) to the likes of AxxoN N, Atki2, Knaw Their Tongues and Mink Freud since 2007.
Despite being partly inspired by Alex Ross’ The Rest is Noise, Yule composed the pieces using samples taken from his own classical music cd collection, picking numbers from a bowl to determine the length of the sample, and then tailoring it to his, or at least the piece’s, needs. In the case of ‘Duet’, this means that the shimmering strings that start the track, are replaced, almost seamlessly, by florid piano runs that splash over the back of the increasingly fertile vocal (a duet, you’d be unsurprised to hear) creating an increasing amount of tension, a mile away from the calm of the opening. As things continue, so strings are added again, but this time their eerie, wiry lines that pop in and out of the gloom until it all ends with this horror film like mash up, clusters of strings seemingly laughed at by the childlike wood winds. Its weird, disconcerting and all rather brilliant.
Check out the Milton Melvin Croissant III created surrealist video for the track, here.
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