James Brooks and Josh Clancy of Elite Gymnastics once assembled a mix for the U.K. fashion line Forty Ounce Clothes titled All We Fucking Care About Is K-Pop, Whitehouse and Our Cats, and while that's surely an exaggeration, the Minneapolis-based electronic duo clearly does have a fondness for Korean pop and provocative noise, and its sample-heavy soundscapes are by turns languid, deep, thoughtful, and thought-provoking. Brooks and Clancy began making music together in 2008, assembling tracks on a laptop, and released their first EP, Real Friends, in 2010. The first Gizzard Greens 12" followed shortly after, and a second appeared in early 2011. As the music press began to pick up on Elite Gymnastics, 2011 proved to be a busy year for them -- along with the second Gizzard Greens single, the duo issued the EP Neu! '92, and two EPs entitled Ruin. All of Elite Gymnastics' material had been originally released through their own Psychedelic Surf Club label, but after online distribution of the All We Fucking Care About... and I Want a 38-Minute Truce During Which There Is No Rape mixes earned them plenty of press (particularly for their embrace of K-pop sounds), they were signed by Acephale Records, which reissued the two Ruin EPs on a single album.

by Mark Deming