akufen: my way.
one winter in 2001, marc leclair aka akufen went up into remote quebec armed with his sampler and a shortwave radio. what he came back with was a sublime set of songs, all capturing an ambient house feel.
the beauty arrives in the fact that the samples that akufen uses are only fractions of a second in length, often involving a single instrument or voice sound. strung together in a cut and paste fashion, the different sounds, removed from their original context are left to flow into each other, forming a fractured yet thoughtful melody. the experimental component of this microsampling is then backed by various 4/4 house beats, propelling this head music into a floorfilling lark.
although mostly low key, tracks such as deck the house and the self-titled cut show the odd funk behind the cutups. the former uses seemingly random bits of words and horns that all mash together along with a stepping beat that makes the fresh sound familiar. the latter takes various guitar sounds and has them slide and crash into each other, almost becoming balearic in its delicacy.
this type of music wouldn't rub people who don't like dance music anyways, but the merging of the automatiste technique with the crowd-pleasing style make for an intriguing twist on the usual ear candy. try a piece of the action if you can, before you digest the full buffet.