Veröffentlicht
May 18, 2022
- An alternately impressive and head-scratching LP that packs as much music as possible onto a humble vinyl LP.
- As per usual, the latest Workshop record landed without fanfare at Hardwax, this time a new Lowtec album. But, unlike the label's usually understated MO, Lowtec, real name Jens Kuhn, also provided a preamble. "I wanted to make an LP with as long as possible playing time on only one vinyl record," he told Resident Advisor. "The style can be described as free and reflects the end of the old economy." This is hard to parse, but also feels purposely provocative. What is the "old economy" after all? European style Keynesian? Neoliberalism? Platform capitalism? The attention economy? And how does the "end of the old economy" relate to creating a really long record? But listening to the full Old Economy—70 minutes of music split across two side-long tracks that alternate between dusty house jams and wandering ambient—you might start to get a sense of what Kuhn is getting at.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the record acts as a critique of the way we've privileged quantity over quality in music. Music has always been measured by quantifiable units (e.g. records sold), but the ascendancy of streaming has taken this to new levels—just think of Daniel Ek telling musicians they should think of their music as "continuous engagement" with fans. Old Economy seems to parody this. Kuhn has filled every possible second of a vinyl record with content that operates in a continuous stream, in effect, rematerializing the immaterial algorithmic playlist.
Given Kuhn's desire to sonically map "the end of the old economy," it can be a bit hard to figure out what to make of the actual music, which is something of an outlier in his discography. Kuhn has released his fair share of bangers—whether the minimal groove of "Soliloquies" or the warped disco house of "Out To Lunch"—and the track around the 19-minute mark on the A-side sits up there with the best of them. For over nine minutes Kuhn locks into a stuttered drum and slightly detuned synth loop that, with the occasional undulating chord, is one of his most infectious house tracks to date. Alongside these club groovers, there are also some lovely ambient numbers. The mechanical crickets that emerge around the 29-minute mark practically make it a lullaby.
Listen to the record all in one go and you'll likely be left scratching your head. Like Kuhn's past collaborations with Kassem Mosse as Koloritt, the emphasis here is on improvisational jamming that shifts quickly between tracks, which can be jarring. (Just listen to that string loop that finishes the A-side.)
But, again, maybe this is the point. The transitions are abrasive and abrupt to the point of caricature. The second track on the B-side is one of the record's best, a slowed and tripped-out groover that sounds like Avalon Emerson's "The Frontier" in a k-hole. Kuhn quickly moves into a chord progression at the ten-minute mark that could be a bid for a set at Tomorrowland (at least in Lowtec terms).
At these points it feels like Kuhn is directing us towards the arbitrariness of lumping tracks together on an album in the first place. The sequencing of Old Economy doesn't follow any familiar logics of tone, texture, timbre or rhythm. Instead, these tracks are next to each other simply because Kuhn put them there, the antithesis of YouTube's "12 Hours of Essential Chill Out Music."
So is this the end of the old economy? Finishing the record, I'm not totally sure I have a full grasp on what the old economy is actually supposed to mean, much less if it has ended or not. But in an era where music streams endlessly and we're saturated with details about the minutiae of each release, Old Economy is certainly a creature of Kuhn's own design. It's rewarding and challenging in equal parts, a reminder that the seamless flows of information aren't actually so seamless.
Tracklist01. Old Economy A
02. Old Economy B