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Dutch designer made DE9: Closer to the Edit into a playable web-based instrument
The Dutch designer has rebuilt Richie Hawtin's landmark album DE9, 25 years on, in a way you can deconstruct and remix yourself, in the browser.
I won't go into too many details, but let's just say the house, acid house and then techno scenes of the late 1980s and 1990s were a formative part of my youth. Even today, I just have to stick on Leftism by Leftfield and within seconds I'm mentally back in those heady, intoxicating times.
There are a number of other records that pull off the same trick, too. Frequencies by LFO. Experience by The Prodigy. Dubnobasswithmyheadman by Underworld. Happy Days.
By 2001, though, I was in early middle age, burnt out from too many warehouse parties and free festivals, and had long walked away from the scene. So Richie Hawtin's DE9? I have to admit: never bloody heard of it.
Turns out, though, I've been missing a trick. This landmark recording was put together by British-Canadian electronic musician and DJ Richie Hawtin. It was an album constructed by cutting records into hundreds of short loops and fragments and reassembling them into a continuous mix.
It's minimalist techno, which means it's very stripped back, laid back and the kind of thing I'd listen to when back from the club at 4am. But that's not really important. What was really groundbreaking here was that alongside the album came DE9: Closer to the Edit Parts: a vinyl release containing individual loops used in the process and allowing listeners to experiment with the material themselves.
And that's not all. Ritchie didn't just release the finished mix. Alongside it came DE9: Closer to the Edit Parts; a companion vinyl release containing the raw loops themselves. It was an open invitation for listeners to do their own cutting and reassembling at home.
That invitation is the whole premise behind DE9 Parts, a new anniversary project from Dutch designer and creative director Merijn Straathof, who
had the brilliant idea of rebuilding the idea of the Parts release as an interactive website.
Now all 120 original loops are available to anyone with an internet connection, to play, chain together, run through effects or trigger via MIDI hardware. And there's absolutely no charge for any of it. This is not a commercial project. It's a labour of love.
Visit the website, and you can move through the 120 loops however you like. Play them one at a time, then run them continuously, rearrange them into their own sequence: it's entirely up to you. Along with the possibilities offered by effects and MIDI mapping, Merijn has basically turned a static tracklist into something closer to a functioning instrument.