“How do things come to life? How does meaning appear?”
These are questions that have informed Lifestream, the 2019 release by German composer, electronic producer, and classically trained pianist Johannes Motschmann. Conceived as a narrative arc, the album reflected the natural cycle of all things – from birth to death. Meticulously composed and gloriously realised, it succeeded in bringing such overarching concepts to life in rich, vivid ways. A year on, the German musician has invited friends and collaborators to breathe even more life into Lifestream for a new remix EP.
English techno pioneer, Luke Slater and German Berghain veteran, Chris Liebing both chose to remix the title track of Motschmann’s album taking the original tune into their own clubby spheres. This remix by Slater, who is a household name in the Brit-techno since the early 90s gave his version of Lifestream an insistent beat under which echoes of piano and other fragments of Motschmann’s track can be heard nostalgically.
“What fascinated me most about Luke and Chris’ remixes was that they both developed the music and its underlying traces in very different ways, so what are actually secondary voices in my track suddenly came to the fore, and the main voices recede,” observes Motschmann of the two reworks. “It’s like a development into worlds of sound in which my music might otherwise never appear – As DJs, Luke and Chris take a different outlook on music making than I do, with my often very theoretical approach. The remixes have given me the opportunity of a new perspective: the composer becomes an astonished listener of his own melodies because they unexpectedly appear in a different context.”
Luke Slater has been responsible for some of the most lauded, richly-textured techno of the ’90s, not to mention numerous left field excursions under various monikers. From his beginnings as a resident at Heaven in London in 1989 and his involvement in the early outdoor rave scene, Luke has quickly become one of Britain’s emerging talents with several seminal releases. Over the past three decades, Slater’s sound has been honed across the globe several times over. He also boasts residencies at the likes of Berghain alongside appearances at about every major club or festival you could think of – from the Dutch forest settings of Dekmantel to the incredible setting of Fuji Rock Festival in Japan.
