GALÁN / VOGT: All the Time in the World
GALÁN / VOGT

Arriving two years after Pepo Galán and Karen Vogt's release The Sweet Wait (Editions Furioso), the Spanish ambient soundscaper and Australian vocalist invite eight remix artists into the fold for the elaborate makeover collection All the Time in the World. Marquee names such as Ada, Akira Rabelais, and Markus Guentner appear on the project, as do Alpha, James S. Taylor (Swayzak), Madeleine Cocolas, Hélène Vogelsinger, and The Space Between Numbers (Mrs Jynx and Will Humphreys).

Mastered by German electronic producer Robert Babicz, the seventy-two-minute release includes not one but three Rabelais treatments of “Panacea,” the duo loving them so much they decided to include all three, and includes a remix of a hidden track on the original album, “Engrama,” by The Space Between Numbers. Indicative of the contrasts permeating the release, Alpha's majestic, two-minute dreampop reimagining of “Above the Aether” is dwarfed by the second Rabelais version, which clocks in at a transporting eighteen minutes.

That All the Time in the World is a GALÁN / VOGT release is apparent the moment her aching voice opens Ada's “Between the Tides” treatment. Initially it's only electric piano accompanying Vogt's voice, but the arrangement expands a minute into the track, with drum brushes, woodwinds, and even the chirp of a cricket (or is it a frog's ribbit?) forming part of the throbbing, doom-ambient backdrop. Rabelais' “Panacea” makeovers are sound sculptures that have Vogt's disembodied voice floating through nebulous masses of grainy static and guitar. The effect's pushed to the extreme in the longest one when the vocal's reduced to fragmented flurries swirling at the centre of an ever-churning vortex. Despite being half its length, the spirits-possessed third is arguably the most haunting of the three.

Vogelsinger gives “Opa” an epic, engulfing makeover awash in shoegazy slowburn and volcanic shudder, and with Vogt draped across breath-like waves of ambient drift, the ever-reliable Guentner brings his customary artistry to an overhaul of “The Dark Opens the Way.” Whereas Cocolas opts for piano-laden melancholia in her “Nothing is Under Control” treatment, The Space Between Numbers imbues “Engrama” with a rather Burial-like vibe before shaping the material into a stately funeral lament. Most of the versions generally locate themselves in the ambient soundscaping zone, which helps makes the James S. Taylor update of “Starseed” memorable for being so animated and almost pop-styled.

December 2023