who knew carl craig was such the artist...

(i love seeing the mention of techno in the new york times...techno represent!)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/arts/music/09craig.html

The New York Times

February 9, 2010
Music Review
Imaginary Soundtracks for Two Silent Warhol Films
By JON CARAMANICA

There are plenty of ways to kiss, this Andy Warhol knew. In his film “Kiss,” which was screened at the Walter Reade Theater on Friday night, there was nibbling, munching, sucking, swallowing, biting and more. Each intimacy had its own peculiar rhythm.

Or was the point that rhythm was inconstant? “Kiss” was one of two Warhol shorts shown here as part of the Unsound Festival. The second, with an unprintable title, depicted a young man from the neck up, supposedly receiving oral sex.

Both films, as originally released, were silent, but the Unsound Festival, an electronic-music smorgasbord that began last week and continues through Sunday, gave them imaginary soundtracks. “Kiss” received the attentions of Max Loderbauer of the German electronic duo nsi. (the other member, Tobias Freund, was unable to attend) and Sasu Ripatti (who also performed the previous night at the festival’s opening show, under his Vladislav Delay alias). The second film was tackled by the Detroit techno innovator Carl Craig.

Mr. Loderbauer, who was playing dark, stern figures on a keyboard and manipulating an effects kit, and Mr. Ripatti, who was taking Mr. Loderbauer’s sounds and tweaking them with his own effects and controlling the mix, were working with the more fruitful and vibrant source material. The kisses on screen above them played as a series of anti-erotic grotesqueries, but there was often no correlation between screen and sound, with disjointed crashing noises during one of the most tender interactions, and low bass thrums during a scene with the aggression of a “Wild Kingdom” highlight reel.

The music was constant, but there were long enough lulls to ponder the social dynamics of Warhol’s Factory, and whether the subjects of these films were empowered or overpowered. Despite the inclusion of some gay couples, “Kiss,” made in 1963, was surprisingly hetero-normative. In most of the male-female couplings, the woman is passive, with the man seemingly attacking, often from above.

But in the end the music rendered no judgment on the film. Even though Mr. Loderbauer regularly glanced over at Mr. Ripatti to check in, it seemed neither was much concerned with what was transpiring in the film. They were talking to each other.

Mr. Craig, who performed alone, didn’t have that luxury, nor did he have the benefit of several discrete scenes to dissect and comment on. His Warhol film, from 1964, was a single still shot, varying only in angle of head, direction of eye, tension and mood.

With this limited palette, Mr. Craig, who largely played a custom-built modular synthesizer, was comparatively florid, with bulbous, emphatic music that turned Mr. Warhol’s single shot into a series of micro-movements. In places, Mr. Craig returned to his techno roots, injecting a crisp drum pattern during blips of excitement on screen. In one brilliant moment he dropped a beat just as the film subject’s eyes lined up with the camera with a look of severity.

Like Mr. Loderbauer and Mr. Ripatti before him, Mr. Craig was tentative, as if not wanting to interrupt the film. And there were missteps, particularly when Mr. Craig attempted moments of lightness, which led only to the realization that any sound effects added to a sex scene begin to take on a comedic air.

But he understood something Mr. Loderbauer and Mr. Ripatti had not: that intimacy moves back and forth between abstraction and lucidity, and to fully capture it, you’ve got to be paying attention.