total wife – make.it.last.x.full.body.2.recovery
A record becoming interesting is rarely due to a computer crash. That was approximately how things went for Luna Kupper of Total Wife in the few weeks leading up to come back down being released in late August/early September. She lost her hard drive containing the completed album as well as half of their forthcoming record and numerous other clients’ session recordings. Data Recovery Service delivered a thumb drive containing 25,000 un-named .WAV files; most, as per Ms. Kupper, “were a rotting scream of masses of various sounds”. There were also half-finished versions of four come back down songs from an old drive she had long since forgotten existed. Instead of trying to finish these she decided to give them all away.
The first was called “make.it.last.x.full.body.2.recovery” (as in “Full Body 2”, a studio in Philadelphia) to help Total Wife rebuild. And what came back leaned on top of all that damage as opposed to covering it up. It is just their typical mash-up of shoegaze, break beats & homemade samples, but with this new version being way more frayed, warped, etc. than anything they’ve ever done for “come.back.down.” This time around there are some rough edges that seem intentionally placed and not by accident. Ash Richter of Total Wife also made the video for the song, a visualizer based off of grainy night-time footage that feels much like a home-movie than an actual music video. The two go well together; since this track has been created from files that were intended to be temporary.
It’s also the first taste of come.back.down.x.recovery, a four-track EP due October 9 on Julia’s War Recordings that gives the other three recovered songs to Winter, They Are Gutting a Body of Water, and Scott Cortez. Come back down itself, a ten-track record that earned praise from Stereogum, Nashville Scene, Paste, and others, is getting its first vinyl and CD pressing on the same date, with pre-orders live now. What gets me is that these aren’t remixes in the usual sense; there was no clean multitrack to start from, just wreckage somebody chose to build on instead of scrap.
