ParisTransAtlantic (FR)

This 21-minute live set, recorded by Cascone, Chartier and Deupree in Montréal in April 2001, is beautifully sculpted, elegant and spacious – and nowhere near as “minimal” as some of their recent work. Indeed, there’s a lot of activity going on, but the musicians shuffle elements around from foreground to background with consummate skill and studiously avoid the in-yer-face rips and snarls of Mego-style electronica. It’s classy stuff, and yields much when subsequently “reconstructed” (about time we dispensed with the word “remix” for good) by each artist in turn. Cascone’s Max/MSP software on “New World Rising (New Density Mix)” squeezes the final few minutes of the music through its own cracks to produce a compact, pulsing four and a half minutes, while Chartier’s “Afterimage” distills its essence down to static drones punctuated by tiny bell sounds and frosty panning clicks. On “4+2_Stil Live” Deupree’s loops crunch out a locked groove backbeat over which layers of gritty algorithmic crickets settle – things get alarmingly funky after about six minutes, but just when you finally expect the thumping 110bpm bass, Deupree pulls out the clicks and crackles and leaves you with the clouds. Accomplished and entertaining, if not as captivating as the three preceding tracks.