- ambiq, an experimental jazz trio, is the latest endeavour from German artist Max Loderbauer. Last year's spaced-out album presented an exploratory and abstract approach that sometimes felt a little aimless. Now, a year later, Arjunausic is re-releasing the LP, and they've thrown in a remix 12-inch to sweeten the deal.
Ricardo Villalobos is an obvious choice to remix ambiq: he frequently collaborates with Loderbauer and has a musical kinship with ambiq's patient style. He takes on "Tund," a four-minute track that leans closer to techno's rigid pulse than most on ambiq, and stretches it out. It's shorter than Villalobos's sprawling recent remixes of Insanlar and DJ Pierre, and it doesn't quite measure up in execution either. He builds one of his sturdy beats and feeds fragments of the trio's performance into it, creating a whirlpool of weird ear candy that seems content to only spin in place.
Tobias Freund chooses the more challenging "Toxic Underground" and distills its 12-minute wander into a solid techno workout. Freund constructs his framework from the ground up, laying down the bass-heavy foundations of a chugging techno tune and letting the band sizzle and cook over the top. It's a style more sympathetic to ambiq's live-jam feel, and a killer dance floor jam to boot.
TracklistA1 Tund (Ricardo Villalobos Remix)
B1 Toxic Underground (Tobias Remix)