Quiet on the set

EASY READERS Martin and Edwards dig dusty old things.

Photo: Achim Hatzius

As a natural outgrowth of deejaying, sampling or repurposing chunks of music from records has been essential to the music of everyone from Sugar Hill Gang to Daft Punk. Commotion often follows sampling—sometimes all the way to a courtroom. Today, it is often cheaper for known producers to hire musicians and replay a sample phrase—as Diplo did for his Clash bit on M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes”—than to get a sample cleared. On the other hand, “micro-sampling”—using very small bits of music as Justice does—is all the rage. But no one does sampling quite like the Berlin/London duo Quiet Village.

On Quiet Village’s new, third album, Silent Movie, Matt Edwards and Joel Martin create a mood so evocative and dense with subliminal cultural associations that one can practically picture scenes from an unmade film—a melancholy romantic thriller set on a remote island in the Pacific where hallucinogenic berries are plentiful. Tracks such as “Can’t Be Beat” and “Pacific Rhythm” feel like the disco equivalents to the Avalanches’ album from 2000, Since I Left You. Likewise, the building blocks of Movie are a dizzying number of samples from records both obscure and ubiquitous—chosen for their distinctive sonic charms.

Silent Movie touches on and borrows from cop-show funk, tiki-bar exotica, soft-focus disco, prog-rock pomp and lush soul. It blurs the line between a highly edited DJ mix and studio creation. Reviewers are already getting bogged down in piecing together the source material for Silent Movie and completely miss the point—easy-listening schmaltz, forgotten soul and pop detritus expertly assembled into a lush, moody and sophisticated original style. Silent Movie strikes us as cerebral head music that’s particularly thought-provoking.

Quiet Village’s jazz/surf/exotica/cosmic house sound might seem like a departure for Edwards, a rising star on the hip side of the dance underground for his tech-house and electronic disco productions as Radio Slave and with his label Rekids. But for Martin it’s in keeping with a passion for films—“even bad ones,” he says—and their soundtracks. On Martin’s MySpace profile, he indicates that he works for the largest library music company in the world. Both of the guys, who named themselves after a Martin Denny album in 2003, are soundtrack fanatics. “Joel’s really into a lot of ’60s and early ’70s psychedelia and soundtracks, and I’m more into contemporary soundtracks at the moment, like Ryuichi Sakamoto,” Edwards says. “I’m a massive Vangelis fan. [I] really, really love Vangelis, particularly Blade Runner. That’s probably one of the best soundtracks that’s been made in the last 30 years.”

The project’s main asset is an ability to sort through a massive collection of records culled from second-hand shops and not just cut loops, but create collages with subtle textures. There’s a lot of processing and overdubs behind the magic. “It’s not about just using samples,” Edwards says.

The duo will test its touring act—which involves a digital video collage edited live by Martin to complement the show—at summer festivals in the U.K. where Radio Slave plays many a dance tent. “It’s a good way to introduce Quiet Village, which is very difficult to program because it’s not dance music, and it’s not something that people can dance to,” Edwards says. “When it becomes night, people want to rave.”

Quiet Village might not have a soundtrack deal of its own, but Edwards is optimistic about its crossover appeal. “I guess we want to be like an edgy version of good easy-listening music where it’s not completely diluted coffee-table music but has some depth to it [and is] still accessible,” he says. “And hopefully my parents will listen to it.”

Silent Movie is out now on !K7.