It’s been 15 years already since Colin de la Plante released »As High as the Sky«, his début album as The Mole. At the time, he was still living in Montreal and preferred to work with disco beats as the basis for his sample-heavy house sound. He has moved to Berlin in the meantime and still likes to use samples, although the beats have changed somewhat. Today, he is more interested in breakbeats in the hip-hop sense. Stylistically he is quite open, even if his piece »Break for Ma« sounds very much like an homage to the Nightmares on Wax classic »Smokers Delight«. The number of tracks on »The River Widens« is also striking. With 21 titles in just under an hour, he has kept the individual pieces shorter than ever before. Much of it resembles sketches: there is a soundscape over which dub master Lee »Scratch« Perry, who died five years ago, monologues to Ganja, and there is a break-jazz-reggae jam. There are also plenty of abstract interludes. The pieces mutate noticeably even in short durations, collapsing in on themselves or simply disappearing to make way for the next number. The relationship to dancing has changed anyway, so the many associative sample collages seem less like filler material than reflections on questions beyond the dance floor, which becomes clear in the choice of samples that sometimes deal with the relative commodity character of books or the character of art. All that aside, The Mole doesn’t overwhelm you with statements. He merely gives suggestions on how to think for ourselves about one or the other question. And when he focuses on the groove, the joy is great. A plea for the record to be listened to and as such a real hit.
The River Widens
