Williamsburg couple opt for tantra trances over pickled cabbage

Comments (0) By Andy Beta Tuesday, Mar 2 2004

On top of El Topo, all covered with synth cheese and nipple-length hair, it suddenly rises: a space ritual as practiced by a Williamsburg couple during all-night flights on tantranalog throbs. This ain't your obvious Kraut in a Can (that'd make it "Del Monte"), but rather the primordial Teutonic ooze that's long bubbled beneath the DFA's A Certain Ratio of Fourmula. And now it's crawling out of the East River in 14 minutes of synthesized rain, drizzling on peaks and troughs of pure soundwaves, gathering and dissipating on chakra-pulse bass undulations.

photo: DFA Records

Mug shots of love

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Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom
"El Monte"
DFA

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When not doubling as in-house electronics wiz for Plantain Studios, Gavin Russom and soul mate Delia Gonzalez utilize handmade analog keyboards, oscillators, and modulators on their first DFA single, with nary a slashing guitar, clopping cowbell, snare crack, or zeitgeisty sigh of ennui audible. Instead, the couple weave velvety-purple arpeggiations upon Oriental rugs stitched from Salvation Army gatefolds of Klaus Schulze's Body Love Vol. 2 and Jean-Michel Jarre's Oxygene, hip-notizing hypsters with newfangled tangerine dreams. "El Monte" also makes manifest Manuel Göttsching's Meditations for Electric Guitar and Terry Riley's Persian Surgery Dervishes: two more trance classics that secretly make DFA the infamous "discopunk" label it is.