The Exaltics :: Das Heise Experiment – The Remixes (Solar One Music)

Arguably, electro has garnered a greater audience in the past decade. What is undeniable is the quality on show on these four remixes. The originals have been given a contemporary chill, an industrial and inhuman touch that reflects the divisive times we find ourselves now living in.

Intense and raw electro

2013. Trump was yet to enter the White House. COVID, ya wha? War, yes, but not on the scale we have now. When The Exaltics released Das Heise Experiment, the world was (arguably) a little less complicated. The album came out on a sub-label, Abstract Acid, of the now defunct Abstract Forms. It was a time when Robert Witschakowski was still honing his sound, when the Solar One Music founder was experimenting with the audio scowls of the TB303. Witschakowski has continued to master his own brand of intense and raw electro. His latest EP is an accompaniment to the ten year anniversary and re-edition of Das Heise Experiment and calls on some heavyweights of machine funk to partner and remix the original works.

The opening track is a collaboration between The Exaltics and a Detroit couple that pioneered their own unique brand of analogue coldness, ADULT. This less than likely venture reaps a wonderful reward in the brutality of “Dreizehn Habits.” Jagged serrating percussion is further weaponized by a liberal spray of distortion. Piercing the industrial pain is Nicola Kuperus’ voice, her larynx strained and stretched by filters in this guttural and entrancing opener. Gesloten Cirkel adopts the same brooding and broken mantle, his remix of “Sieben” races out of the stocks before descending into a icy computer break where splintered snares scissor and stab speaker cones. The flip brings the listener back to Detroit and the master hands of Keith Tucker. Donning his K1 alias, the former Aux88 member, delivers a work of arctic analog music. A solemn humanoid voice is imprisoned by bass and cutting snares, clinical undercurrents dropping the temperatures in this creation of crystalline chords and sinister shadows. Maintaining that sub-zero Michigan feel, Arpanet close with the liquid nitrogen dowsed Helium Shell Remodel of “Zwoelf.” The lab coats are buttons, the goggles in place, as beats and harmonies are frozen into new forms and shapes in this frosted finish.

Ten years can be a long time. In musical terms, the acid box that was central to the making of Das Heise Experiment is still as popular as ever. Arguably, electro has garnered a greater audience in the past decade. What is undeniable is the quality on show on these four remixes. The originals have been given a contemporary chill, an industrial and inhuman touch that reflects the divisive times we find ourselves now living in.

Das Heise Experiment – The Remixes is available on Solar One Music. [Bandcamp]