James Linck is caught in a liminal space, stuck between stations. He knows his home is both a rest stop and a delivery spot, but he doesn’t know its location. His lover could help him find it, but she shifts shapes and eludes his grasp; in fact, she may very well be gone for good. Linck is an emotional Goldilocks, but he can’t quite get the balance right between baring his soul or letting it hibernate. Alone and inebriated, the musician seeks relief in Zen koans, drunk texts, and soul songs. But as psychically unmoored as James Linck seems, he’s still got a grip — at least on the city he lives in — and it’s got its grip on him.
The eponymous “Space Station” off the alternative R&B artist’s recently released LP, Small World, is Detroit itself. Over a bed of twinkling keys, Linck plaintively croons that it’s a place “isolated with no escape from,” and like his departed lover, it fills his heart only to break it. He’s adrift on the inside, but by all appearances, he’s tethered to this town whose sound was once “fearless exaltation.” Space stations lack major propulsion or landing systems; instead, other vehicles transport people and cargo to and from it.
A Motor City without an engine. It’s an odd portrait to paint, but despite the influx of breathless articles signaling the resurgence of our city, Detroit is at a critical junction — not in stasis, perhaps, but in limbo, as it reconciles a complicated past with a hopeful future. And it’s this sensation of suspended animation that Linck captures on the woozy, midtempo beats on “Space Station,” of which he says “it’s right at that upper 90s BPM tempo where you don’t know if it’s a fast or slow track.”
If Linck’s original version is like dancing on a gelatinous surface or shifting sands, all wobbly textures and aqueous harmonies, then Clyde Moop removes the very ground beneath our feet with his remix of “Space Station,” which Detroit Music Magazine is honored to premiere today. Clyde Moop, a solo project of Detroit’s Alex Lauer (who’s also a member of Lord Scrummage), highlights the track’s psychic confusion by playing up its rhythmic complexity. Even as drum patterns and beat sequences fly at your face, nothing locks into a groove, which makes it even harder to get your bearings. Linck cuts you loose from the robotic arm of the space station, but Moop puts you right in the midst of an asteroid field.
The remix opens on a pitch-shifted loop of Linck intoning the word “don’t” as if hoping to forestall being torn asunder by the vacuum of space. But Moop’s onslaught of beats is heavy and unpredictable; Linck is able to get a few phrases out but is often enveloped by shards of sonic debris: whizzing digital hi-hats, atonal piano chords, and his own voice — reformulated as incessant synth stabs. Moop’s remix recalls late ’90s IDM or drill’n’bass, but you know there’s a ghost in the machine, looking to get out.
It’s remarkably unnerving for a song whose original tenor was more pensive than tense, but Lauer succeeds in his aims: “My goal was to add heavy beats to the original production and give it more of a sci-fi type of feel. I wanted to keep some of the original integrity of the song but really get that sci-fi vibe going.” Both versions of the track have a mien of the dystopian to them: the mulberry hues of Linck’s recall the dreamlike fabulism of Spike Jonze’s Her, while Moop’s intricate remix is reminiscent of Christopher Nolan’s most labyrinthine narratives. Nevertheless, both artists keep it more “real” than “reel” — we’re very much in the actual world, and that’s perhaps the most frightening thing of all.
According to Linck, “Space Station” forms the core of Small World: “It really encapsulates the whole record. I think I was at my most literal lyrically during the second half of the track, and because of that I almost didn’t include it on the record. I felt like it was a little too revealing. I’m glad I thought better of it and changed my mind.” We’re glad, too, and with the possibility of more Clyde Moop and James Linck collaborations to come, a space station feels more and more like home.
James Linck performs Saturday, September 12 at 8:30 p.m. on the Forest Stage of Dally in the Alley. Clyde Moop will perform next Thursday, September 17 at Tires on a bill that includes Ryan Spencer and Charles Trees of Jamaican Queens, among others. Doors open at 9:00 p.m., and tickets are $10 at the door. Listen to the Detroit Music Magazine premiere of Clyde Moop’s remix of James Linck’s “Space Station” below: