The term “collision music” is typically associated with bassist/producer Bill Laswell, known for uniting artists from divergent sound worlds to create something unexpected. Coventry Suite Pt. 1, the experimental hip-hop and R&B project from Sagitairre’s Ivan Mairesse, is directly influenced by Laswell’s concept — “colliding” musicians from various communities in his hometown of LA to form the genre-agnostic group, Ascetic Faces. The album’s title is an additional nod to Coventry, the British town that spawned ska group The Specials and the multiracial 2-Tone movement.
“I was interested early on in the recontextualization aspect of sampling, whether that came from Christian Marclay or Prince Paul,” explains Mairesse. “Marrying sounds or techniques from culturally distant spheres is a way of calling into question listeners' tendencies to keep these worlds separate. There is a certain political critique communicated in those juxtapositions. In a way, it’s an extension of pop-art.”
