Karen Gwyer’s Needs Continuum remixed as “suite of deformations”

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Torn Hawk reconfigures Gwyer’s No Pain In Pop debut into something entirely different.

The Brooklyn A/V artist (aka Luke Wyatt) was originally commissioned to remix the loop-based pop of Needs Continuum. However, what he turned in to the artist and label shares only DNA with the originals, for what he describes as a 35 minute “suite of deformations.”

The compositions will be released as the Cowboys (For Karen) 12″ via No Pain In Pop on July 15. Stream ‘Gauze (Sped)’ for a taste of what to expect. In addition, Hawk has penned a narrative for the set (“The sounds had decided to tell a story about this girl and her cowboy dad.”); read the whole thing below.

Read FACT’s review of Needs Continuum, which Maya Kalev described as “an intimate and beautiful record.” [via Juno Plus]

Cowboys (For Karen) Narrative from Torn Hawk:

Took the stems, put a rope around them and dragged them through some American dust. The dust gathered itself into a shape, like a maple sugar candy. It was an outline of this prairie girl. The sounds had decided to tell a story about this girl and her cowboy dad.

Gauze (Spread):

A bowl of ground glass. She pours it into her frayed gingham apron and carries it through the tall yellow grass.

Cowboys:

The riff is them coming over the hill, coming back to those waiting on porches and in doorways. John Ford always had people framed waiting in such places.

Grace Scrawl:

The daughter is sent for water. She draws with a stick in the wet sand by the river bank, making trailing lacy shapes that link and curl back on themselves.

Oak & Sludge:

Her father swings an axe through the first snow of the year. Dark metal cuts a black motion arc through the white, and finds a thudding home in oak.

Gauze (Sped):

Hopped up on taffy and molasses, instead of doing chores she spends an hour staring at the sun through a piece of ruby-colored glass. When the sugar crash comes, she lies on the cool, hard packed dirt under the porch, and rides out the headache looking at the spindly insects that make a home in the dark places down there.