Exclusive unheard live extracts from cv313's live performance at Glass City Record Store release party in Detroit, USA. Recorded from 16 channel Mackie mixer, performed entirely on analog/digital hardware, samplers and sequencers. NO COMPUTER INVOLVED. Recorded in May, 2001 @ a warehouse somewhere in Detroit.

Thoughts:

"Live Excursions" is the third in the cv313 Live series, this time a recording of a gig performed by Hitchell at the 2001 DEMF Festival for the Glass City Records release party. As the earliest recording in the series to date it is in many ways Live @ Primary‘s opposite number, a fact reflected in the vastly different material featured, as well as the negative-print artwork that adorns the gatefold Eco friendly wallet.

It is perhaps the most easily recognizable as a cv313 gig in particular, featuring many staples of early cv313 material with very few of the diversions into "Soultek", "Intrusion" or other housier archive material that characterizes other live cv313 sets. "Live Excursions" focuses heavily on on tightly looped, mesmerizing, repeated grooves soaked in delay and reverb, with warm, fuzzy textures and soft, through-the-walls beat-work that one can imagine anesthetizing many a wearied festival-goer seeking a final, hazy chill out..

TRACK LISTING

1.glasscity Session I 22:17
2.glasscity Session II 11:08
3.glasscity Session III 07:48
4.glasscity Session IV 13:41
5.glasscity Session V 10:05
6.glasscity Session VI 05:50
7.glasscity Session VII 06:45

A characteristically epic collection from the Echospace [Detroit] stable, "Dimensional Space" pairs an eighty-minute set of originals with a “Subtraktive” disc featuring cv313's own version plus variations by The Sight Below, Reference (Luke Hess and Brian Kage), King Midas Sound, bvdub (Brock Van Wey), and Hitchell and Modell under the Intrusion and Deepchord Presents Echospace monikers.

Dub-techno is the label that's sometimes assigned to the music Hitchell and Modell have released under a number of different aliases, but it's an imperfect term, even if a convenient signifier: as Dimensional Space repeatedly illustrates, their music refuses to be restricted by so simple a designation. If anything, it makes more sense to cast aside genre labels in favour of adjectives such as aquatic, enveloping, oceanic, reverberant, and vaporous, the accumulation of which allows the listener new to their soundworld to acquire some preliminary sense of its character. The material on the release is hardly techno as conventionally defined (if anything, cv313's understated swing has more in common with house), though it does share with dub a concern for multi-dimensional production design.

The eighty-minute opening disc features seven originals of varying mood, the shortest eight minutes and the longest sixteen. Some are rhythmically charged pieces, whereas others drift in a comparatively dream-like and laid-back manner (“Energies Collide,” “Evocation,” “Sella Bay”). Within “Luna Petra,” the presence of a muted instrument—the density of the soundmass of which it's a part makes it difficult to determine whether it's a melodica, harmonica, or horn—lends the material a jazz-like feel. A lumbering pulse injects the burbling swirl of “Serenity Thru Sorrow” with a kinetic and funk-inflected force as cold gusts of winds blow across the track's slippery surfaces, while “Clouds Beyond,” a barely contained fireball of energy, exudes even more propulsive drive in its bubbly, bass-thudding broil.

cv313's ultra-vaporous stepper “Subtraktive,” which captures in a single track the project's persona in its essential form, inaugurates the release's second half. And though it admittedly has the feel of a bonus disc due to its concentration on remix treatments, it also plays very much like a natural sibling to the first half when the guests don't wholly strip the original's cv313 identity away from their own versions. The Sight Below's, for example, could easily be mistaken for a Hitchell and Modell original, while Intrusion's understandably feels closely connected to the original, given that Hitchell's the man behind the Intrusion mask. Not all, however, hew as closely to cv313's version. Hess and Kage's feels like a club track straining to break free of its chains and unleash a full-on house groove—something that Deepchord Presents Echospace's pumping “Live Dub,” in fact, accomplishes. In an especially bold makeover, King Midas Sound re-imagines the track as a trippy dub poetry reverie replete with a female lead vocal, while Van Wey shows himself to be his characteristically voluminous self in transmuting the original into a sweeping, twenty-minute “Journey East of the Lotus Leaves” opus. It seems only fitting that Dimensional Space should end on such an epic note. -Textura Magazine

TRACK LISTING

CD1:
1.luna Petra 09:55
2.serenity Thru Sorrow 13:00
3.clouds Beyond 10:07
4.energies Collide 12:51
5.durveda 07:50
6.evocation 10:02
7.sella Bay 15:50

CD2:
8.subtraktive [original Smallfish Mix] 15:44
9.subtraktive [the Sight Below Mix] 06:30
10.subtraktive [luke Hess + Brian Cage's Reference Mix] 11:57
11.subtraktive [deepchord Presents Echospace Live Dub] Remastered 10:42
12.subtraktive [king Midas Sound Dub] 06:43
13.subtraktive [intrusion's Enchantment] 22:17
14.subtraktive [bvdub's Journey East Of The Lotus Leaves] 20:0

Nearly 10 years out of print, recut and remastered from the analogue tape masters from Alchemy's pristine mastering work; focusing and enriching every finite detail into pure analogue bliss! This remastered edition features epic reworks of cv313's now classic, "Seconds To Forever" released back in 2010. The first track is a reshape by intrusion, dubbed out live in the mix from the original 8 channel analogue tapes as to summon the spirit of King Tubby. There's also two beautiful remixes from the brilliant Rod Modell (DeepChord). Those touched by his recent output will have a lot to love here. Gorgeous plumes of sound envelope the listener into near hypnosis, subdiving deeper than even the original work could. Sublime and beyond gravity, another exquisite excursion transmitting from the other side of the galaxy. Pressed onto 150 gram crystal virgin blue wax. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: High watermarks of dub-techno / dream-state electronics by Steven Hitchell (I forget if Rod Modell had left by this point). Truly blissed out pieces of serene hypnosis, gentle propelled by fluttery, undulating rhythms and thick with electrostatic. A seminal now as they were then.

TRACK LISTING

A1: Seconds To Forever [intrusion Dub]
A2: Seconds To Forever [deepchord Mix I]
B: Seconds To Forever [deepchord Mix II]

Approaching 20 years since its original release (2007 via Smallfish), now remastered to pure analogue bliss from the original ampex tape masters.

The sound on display here I could imagine as a soundtrack while submerging in a submersible diving deeper than the Marianas trench!

The B side now features an epic live version captured @ AIR, Tokyo, Japan. Made in the heart of Detroit, with love! 

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Benefiting from a high resolution remaster, these cv313 standards are now available once again, one sexy blue midnight vinyl to boot. Dub-techno classics, and a high watermark of the genre.

TRACK LISTING

A. Subtraktive [remastered] 15:45
B. Subtraktive [live In Japan] 17:58

New material recorded from cv313 since last year's release of "Dimensional Space" LP/CD comes in the form of an extended live set.
A near hour long voyage through deep space was recorded live in a strictly analogue setting utilizing the mixing desk primarily as the main instrument.
In the spirit of true-to-form dub tradition, this title pays homage to those who have embraced cv313's now classic, "Subtraktive." Pure sonic submersion to the deepest ends of the mind, body and soul, all will have plenty to enjoy. This is the gospel of deep......