vr04 onur özer - kasmir remixes (loco dice/jens zimmermann) - out september 15. hot off the heels of onur özer’s most excellent mind melt album kasmir, released october of 2007, comes the reinterpretations on vakant’s vr division. wonderfully thought out, vr handles remixes exclusively leaving vakant itself pure to its artists. this constellation leaves everyone free to the corruption of their fancy, allowing the artists to choose their own remixers. with Onur, finding willing interpreters is not a difficult task and the heavy of the heavies representing the light and dark sides of the force are here on vr04. on the a side loco dice, aka tunisian born yassine ben achour, takes onur’s instrument laden ‘eclipse’ and puts it through the treatment. what comes out the other end is popping state-of-the-art tech house with onur’s depth and loco dice’s spontaneous flow. on the flip things get serious. jens zimmermann, the deep, deep, freak out master hailing from frankfurt, contributes his own spin on ‘sahara’. what already started out as a tweaked out twilight adventure gets even more spacey. sitting somewhere between cologne’s studio 1, post intergalactic colonization, and seventh century silk road somewhere around uzbekistan, his 15 minute “wüstenmond” (desert moon) remix lives in its own antimatter reality.

vr03 özer/kaden - red cabaret (2000andone remix)/synkope (daniel stefanik remix). vakant, based in the shadowy hedonic capital of berlin, once again calls out to its sunlight fearing brood to unite and rejoice in their salvation. the freaky dual podium of vakant and remix-only vakant r continues to deliver its message of solemn tomfoolery and whimsical gravity with its latest vr03. while some purveyors of truth dilute their central message with foreign remix filler, the head of vakant, il a. papino, proclaimed “let there be vr” and as such vakant r was born from the rib of vakant original productions. third in vakant r’s installment of virtuous interpretations, these remixes stand on their own with sincere reverence to their original creations. on our man from istanbul onur özer’s ‘red cabaret’ is paid homage by amsterdam’s dylan hermelijn aka 2000andone, by some means pushing the corpulent funk ever skyward. flipping the black disk finds jena’s mathias kaden’s ‘synkope’ taken to deeper depths of murky understanding by leipzig’s daniel stefanik. a) onur özer - red cabaret (2000andone remix) b) mathias kaden - synkope (daniel stefanik remix)