Listen to a string of their productions in a row, and it becomes clear just how enamored with Carl Craig Âme are. The German duo's past decade of releases have tracked those of the legendary Detroit techno producer in vibe as well as strict sonic detail, sharing a largeness of vision and penchant for tidal surges of overwhelming intensity, sweeping away the dancefloor like a glacier descending on a small town. Kristian Beyer and Frank Wiedemann are never framed this way-- they're too housey, too popular, too European-- but they're also second only to Craig as the pre-eminent contemporary popularizers of the Detroit techno aesthetic. Both sound fascinated with a certain kind of fluid roboticism and syncopated propulsion that immediately evokes the motor city: You can hear it in Âme tracks like their remix of Rodamaal's "Insomnia", which simultaneously evokes a nuclear power station charging up and some kind of alien samba.
Craig's unparalleled back-catalog has allowed his more recent output a certain clarity and focus, a sense of hitting targets with practiced precision. Âme have tried to fit both Craig's earlier and more recent approaches into their spartan release schedule, and seem to try to find their footing on uncertain terrain even as they stretch out into a sprint. This yields its own benefits, with Âme tunes reliably offering the biggest and most startling moments in any DJ sets they grace. That sense of startlement is undercut somewhat by the conservative DJ set format of Live, which presents a potted history of the duo's past eight years. Pristine and devoid of audience noise, Live is neither a genuine live document, nor does it offer much of the self-manipulation that characterizes many of dance music's greatest "live" albums. The set's modest ambitions seem born of pragmatism: The duo's last full-length release was their 2004 eponymous debut, and Live offers an unofficial "greatest hits" that can appeal both to the newcomer and the established fan.
Live's pedantic interspersing of vocal and instrumental tunes suggests a kind of contest, which the instrumental tunes decisively win. Âme's remixes and vocal tracks are never less than fine, but here the consistently flowery vocals-- from Amampondo's keening to UNKLE's awful 90s rave poetry-- can feel intrusive, distracting from the mechanized rigor of the grooves with their insistent personality. Âme's frequent collaborator Henrik Schwarz does well with vocal-based remixes perhaps because his own sound is so artfully naturalistic; Âme's sound is not, instead peaking when it feels least human and evacuated of recognizable emotion. Which is not to say that this music is purely functional or anti-narrativist; rather, its most vivid stories are those that machines tell themselves in the hushed isolation of the night. "Enoi", with its blaring foghorns and creeping, abstracted menace, imagines countless unmanned submarines positioning to commence World War III amongst themselves. "Setsa", all clattering percussion and shivering organ, could be a funeral march for a dead factory. Most commandingly, the inimitable "Rej" could be taken from a modern remake of Fantasia, its shimmering and deliquescing keyboard runs offering the perfect soundtrack to a glowing underwater ballet dance performed by electric eels. These sounds have enough character to render vocals redundant: Âme's remix of Underworld's "Crocodile" is astonishing less for how the duo frames Karl Hyde's vocal than for what happens when they nearly leave him behind, unleashing a remarkable duet between a prowling bassline and involutedly syncopated synth arpeggio, in perhaps this set's most unabashedly triumphant victory lap.
Live can feel a bit like a missed opportunity: Âme's arrangements are deep enough to merit more meditative stretches, and anthemic enough to demand longer pinnacles than the duo allows itself here: 14 tracks over nearly 80 minutes hardly seems excessive until one remembers that in their original form these tracks usually average about nine minutes, and they're meant to be played as close to completely as the DJ can manage, their endlessly, inexorably rising sense of excitement rippling like a shiver running across your skin with agonizing slowness. By contrast, Live can seem too efficient, each track put through its paces and returned to the stalls to make way for the next tune's climax, the effect resembling the rolling-hills setting on a treadmill. But this is the griping of the listener who already knows and loves these tunes, and lovable they are; to the uninitiated, Live will be revelatory simply by virtue of its tracklist.
