Richard Chartier has been a key figure in minimal electronica since the mid-1990s. Albums such as a hesitant fold (1999), series (2000) and decisive forms (2001) laid the foundations for a large catalogue of remarkably fastidious music. His stylistic signature gelled with these recordings. it’s a hushed aesthetic that shelters a powerful compositional vision.
Even when pitched to the fringes of audibility, Chartier’s sounds have an extraordinarily seductive quality-the ear is pulled to their unusual contours. Perhaps it’s a sign of his fastidiousness thatre’post’postfabricated is not a straight reissue of his postfabricated, put out by the Microwave label in 1999. Chartier was unhappy about the way the album sounded – his sleeve note tore’post’postfabricated points out that the original sounds were compromised by the analogue transfers to minidisc. So the first CD in this double set is a reconstruction of the original recordings.
There are 23 tracks, ranging in length from ten seconds to ten minutes, but most of them are very short. Rather than the careful, episodic structures that he’d go on to work with, these are mainly single-idea pieces: a loop or a sound is pursued through minute variations. A number of tracks are barem unadorned click pieces; others explore a single timbre or a nuanced use of panning or delay; many have a crunchier, more abrasive edge than is usual with Chartier. While the music lacks the ambition and authority of an album such as series, it has all the conceptual clarity that goes to make Chartier’s music such a vital presence on the minimal scene.
That scene gathers on the second CD, which contains reworkings of source files from the project by such luminaries as COH, Frank Bretschneider, Asmus Tietchens, Goem, Taylor Deupree, alva noto, Matmos and Steve Roden. Brining such distinct styles into contact with Chartier’s minimalism has led to some highly persuasive work. Bretschneider revamps a click piece; alva noto brings Chartier into the orbit of Nicolai’s perfect-beat pop project; Matmos’ “Woofer Blower” takes issue with the introversion of Chartier’s style; Taylor Deupree provides a gorgeously shimmering piece. On the last track, Chartier himself revisits his fragmented early style with a piece in the more continuous vein that he’s often favoured lately. His body of work is now too diverse even for his own Overview album to give a plausible overview; this set provides something else – a snapshot of the continuities in his work and an inkling of the musician’s place in a wider community of electronic minimalists.
—The Wire, UK
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Aah, what a superb piece of work this is. I’ve been after it for some time and I’m glad to say we finally have copies. Richard Chartier is one of those artists that I trust implicitly to provide an engaging and intriguing sound and although he has the ability to challenge the ears as well as the mind, there’s always so much thought and process going on behind the sounds that it’s hard not to get caught up in it. This series of micro-tracks is quite simply sublime. Using a full palette of his trademark sounds the tracks are at once fractured yet incredibly coherent. The second disc comes as a series of reworkings from producers of the calibre of Taylor Deupree, Byetone, Matmos, Steve Roden, Goem, Frank Bretschneider, Coh, Vend, Sogar, Freiband and Asmus Tietchens. Very, very good indeed and proof once again that Chartier is in the premier league of contemporary digital composers. Superb.
—Smallfish, UK
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Richard Chartiers album from 1999 was called Postfabricated and contained a lot of tiny miniatures of sound each with a few seconds until more than ten minutes of length. Now he reconstructed this recording and let some buddies do remixes of it. And the result Asmus Tietchens, Frank Bretschneider, Taylor Deupree, Alva Noto, Matmos and Freiband, who partially make the superclinical computersounds almost swing. Very nice record, if there only weren’t those high frequencies who sometimes make get me use my remote control.
—De:bug, Germany
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With the re-release of the newly recorded version of the limited to 222 piece CD Postfabricated that has been released on Frans de Waards Microwave-Label in 1999 comes a remix CD additionally to it. But something happened what actually is not the intention of a remix album: it is by far more exciting than the original recording. Because RICHARD CHARTIER works with very minimal sounds partially very close over the hearing range, his tracks on Postfabricated aren’t necessary easy to listen to. The remixes – or many more new songs from the given material – add a significant density, sometimes a little bit of a groove, so that you get an easier access to the tracks. The climax are the Clicks’n’ Cuts-like “Throbbox” by FRANK BRETSCHNEIDER or the Loop-Rhythm-piece “Woofer Blower” by Matmos.
—Black, Germany
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Through his investigations of the boundary that separates sound and silence, DC-based recording artist and sound enthusiast Richard Chartier discovers and exploits otherwise neglected nooks & crannies in the spectrum of sound. While his motives may seem paralyzing in concept, Chartier’s rich imagination and the unpredictable ways in which his talents are applied suggest he’s discovered an infinity of possibility where most others have ceased to explore.Re’Post’Postfabricated is a two disc set with Chartier’s reconfigured versions of his own older material on disc one and a compilation of remixes by similar and/or related artists on disc two. Remixers include Matmos, Asmus Tietchens, Taylor Deupree, Sogar, Steve Roden, Vend, ByeTone + more.
—CD Warehouse Newsletter, US
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In a way this release has everything to do with Vital Weekly. Richard Chartier releasedPostFabricated in June 1999 on a dutch CDR label Microwave Recordings, which gathered their name from a review in Vital Weekly to note a whole new genre of laptop music: “Everytime I write about music that borrows elements of house/techno, but also from minimal music, ambient and industrial music, we notice that our vocabulary runs short. It’s a lot of things, but it has no name. I have thought about this for some time now, and I think ‘microwave’ apply describes what it’s about. Micro in the sense that all the changes appear on a microscopic level, small but evidently present, and wave, because there is a current wave of serious musicians that take influences from all these waves of music that have experienced (note that many of them are around for a long time) and take whatever they fit well. “Technology will be so small that it will disappear”, John Cage once said. That might not be entirely true, however it has shrunk over the years. To produce a good quality music that can easily compete with the work made in ‘real’ studios. Technology is micro too now. (Vital Weekly 162). The label Microwave released, as saidPostFabricated and reviewer Roel Meelkop noted in Vital Weekly 178 that the volume was a bit soft and suggested also a remix of this. Now, six later later, we all get it: the re-mastered version and the remixes. Re-mastered might not be the right word, since Chartier reconstructed the entire CD making it sound like it supposed to be when it was made in 1998. These days no-body uses the term ‘microwave’ any more, and that’s because ‘microsound’ is the more popular term these days, but the recordings on this CD have not aged. Chartier uses crackles, bleeps and hiss in a pure form, pure and rhythmical. The twenty-three tracks here are still state-of-the art pieces of microwave. Beautiful crackles and cuts. On the second CD we find the remixes of the original CD by Chartier’s friends. The instruction was that they should try and keep in spirit of the original work and try and make some ‘poppy’ tunes (in which ‘poppy’ not necessarily just means ‘pop-music’). A lot of the usual 12K/Line suspects are here, like Vend, Asmus Tietchens, Frank Bretschneider, Taylor Deupree, Matmos and Steve Roden, Alva Noto and many try and succeed to take the original Chartier sounds and re-shape them into an even more rhythmical form, tighter and fuller with sound, with breaks and even small melodies. Sometimes rhythms return in different pieces, thus adding to the unity of the remixes. As said, the original hasn’t aged since 1999, but the remixes bring the material into the new millennium. Microwave brought to its logical conclusion.
—Vital Weekly, Netherlands
