LP – Discrepant

Deeply intersecting the history of turntablism with experimental electronics and improvisation, Takuro Mizuta Lippit – aka DJ Sniff – arrives on Discrepant with a single-track album that runs over thirty-two minutes. Former artistic director of the famous STEIM in Amsterdam and for years committed to designing customized instruments and interfaces capable of expanding the usual “turntable + mixer” configuration, Lippit radically reinvents the DJ gesture. Of course, he is not the first to move in this direction: figures such as Christian Marclay, Philip Jeck, Shiva Feshareki or Janek Schaefer – without forgetting precursors such as John Cage and Milan Knížák – have already paved the way for the use of the turntable as a true instrument. In Turntable Solos, this legacy takes shape in a physical and almost sculptural practice of vinyl manipulation, where friction, micro-variations in rotation, feedback loops and irregularities in the support become the building blocks. The setup, based on a combination of specially designed devices and extended techniques that expand traditional gestures, allows Lippit to intervene on the sound in real time, modulating its energy with a precision that always remains linked to the contingency of the gesture. Rather than being a total control, it’s instead a close dialogue with an intrinsically unstable system, which reacts, deviates, and provides surprises. The album’s operational flow preserves precisely this tactile tension: the turntable not only provides fragments to manipulate, but it becomes a reactive surface, sensitive to the slightest touch. The improvisational trajectory advances through layers that thicken and dissolve, supported by minimal repetitions. On the one hand, roughness, streaks, field residues, and grainy vibrations emerge; on the other, more open, suspended moments appear, where the sound thins out and allows the subtle structure of the process to emerge. It’s a music constructed in the space of error and the unexpected, entrusted to a direct interaction between body and machine. Throughout its duration, the performance alternates zones of material density and rarefied passages without ever resorting to preordained dynamics: the scraps, the friction, and the slippage of the vinyl are the elements suggesting the directions, orienting the changes of pace. Turntable Solos thus establishes itself as a significant document of contemporary practice on the turntable as a living instrument, capable of renewing itself and generating new forms of listening. Completing the picture is the cover art for Return The Eye by artist Tekkhean Lee, which subtly reflects the perceptive and introspective attitude of the whole project, suggesting an attentive and complicit gaze that the listener is invited to share.

 

dj sniff – Turntable Solos