Any battle for free speech is a battle for public space.
Los Angeles collective Ultra-red (previous releases available from Comatonse, Mille Plateaux, Fat Cat, and Beta Bodega) come forward with an intense, playful and urgent commentary on the rights of undocumented immigrant workers. Using the May Day 2000 rally which took place on Wall Street in New York City as the sound source from which the group craft this suite of compositions, this 20 minute EP energetically brings the immediacy of the workers' situation to the fore. Ranging in style from finely detailed minimal house to precise and focused soundscaping, these recordings mark a stylistic departure for the collective while merging to create a seamless listening experience complete with repeating motifs, both verbal and musical, throughout the release. The use of field recordings of the rally (vocal house?) to create the sense of protest through atmosphere and rhythmic urgency is more effective and complex than to be found in Ultra-red's previous works. Includes an essay by Ultra-red, presented in English and Spanish, on the situation faced by undocumented workers in the USA.
"... dazzling for reproducing the same intensity that arises between street protestors and riot police. Amnistia (por Nueva York) recalls the ambient-Marxists' Seattle WTO protest mixes, with its microhouse concoction of clicked beats, DSP scrapes and crowd chants. The vibe then darkens with collages of rally speeches that arise from a murk of feedback drones. Overall, Ultra-red presents the event as a hallucination rather than a journalistic dispatch."
"'Amnistia' si gridava nelle strade di Nueva York prima del fatidico undici settembre, nel May Day 2000, alla dimostrazione per i diritti degli emigranti organizzata dalle 'labor unions'. Le registrazioni fatte durante quella manifestazione, una marcia di oltre mille persone che nella metropoli americana gridavano le loro ragioni, a ridosso del cuore del capitale, a due passi da Wall Street, sono confluite magistralmente in questa produzione mettendo assieme radicalismo politico ed estetico. Un progetto curatissimo che riesce a far convivere con grande intelligenza l'urgenza della protesta e la contemporaneità dei ritmi, ineccepibile in tutte le sue componenti, con tappeti minimal house (che molto ricordano il tipico e rarefatto suono di Colonia) ma focalizzano invece la loro cruda essenzialità per intenti meno frivoli."
"The dancefloor minimalia makes me cry tears of fractured rhythmic joy... another kind of crying for track three's spooky aural evocation of space and power... which is then re-rendered, in track four, concrete (human mess) and intimate (microcosmic squeak) for the sign-off."
