Low Jack Puts Jesse Osborne-Lanthier and Grischa Lichtenberger's Low Tech Experiments Through a Shredder

Jesse Osborne-Lanthier and German experimentalist Grischa Lichtenberger teamed up a few years ago at MUTEK for a curiously retro performance. The two had always made crushed-out compositions that sounded like the future, but here they were looking back, setting about conjuring an original performance out of old cathode ray tubes from TVs, apparently as a homage to their childhood. But no episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? was as scary as the creaking and creeping range of sounds the duo were able to conjure out of the abandoned technology. And fruitful as that live experiment was, they decided to apply some of the same tactics (as well as a host of VHS sounds) to a series of recorded pieces called CSLM, due out June 9 on Shapednoise, Ascion, and D. Carbone's label Cosmo Rhythmatic.

If the concept brings to mind a tape-warped daze, well, you're in for a shock. Like much of the futurist work the the pair have released separately, this delves into largely unsettling realms—even when they settle into more propulsive rhythms there's a sense of foreboding around what's going. French producer Low Jack—who released lurching collection of club contortions on Modern Love earlier this year—also turns up on the collection to highlight the record's downcast impulses, turning in a frenetically disassembled remix of the opener "CRT Creeper." The more subdued moments of the original are pushed to the margins in favor of static blasts that sorta sound like he tried to send one of their cathode tubes through a paper shredder. There's also hints of the footwork rhythms that crept onto his full length, and blinding white noise, so it's delirious fun for the whole family.

Osborne-Lanthieralso sent over a note about the process of making the record so check that out below, alongside a stream of the Low Jack remix.

"Grischa and I started tinkering with the idea of working on something together after I booked him to do a live set at Berliner Festspiele in 2013 for Foreign Affairs Festival. The idea to work with cathode ray TV sets revolved around an old TV we were using as a monitor for visuals at the space… we tried for the better part of Grischa's soundcheck to get audio signals to generate stuff through its ''video input screen'' but failed miserably resorting to using a popsicle stick to make the channels zap from one to another in a very rudimentary way.

We built a concept around some Facebook conversations we had throughout the following year about the importance of the television in our childhoods, relating it back to the failed experiment we had gazing at the bleu screen and scratching out heads. A bit later on Elektra and MUTEK (which were collaborating on the co-15th year anniversary edition of their festivals) heard we'd started thinking of putting something together and asked if we'd want to present it live. We agreed, but had nothing but vague ideas of what we wanted to accomplish. Grischa flew in to Montreal and after buying towers of VHS sets, tapes, RCA splitters and borrowing old Cathode ray sets, we managed to work our way to the material you hear on the album."