Browse by Artist: BLACK TO COMM

Artist:	BLACK TO COMM
Title:	Earth
Label:	DE STIJL
Format:	CD
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	DESTIJL 098CD

"EARTH is a 2009 silent film by Ho Tzu Nyen, one of Singapore's foremost artists. The visually arresting film has been live-soundtracked by a number of artists (including Oren Ambarchi) in several locales, and after Black to Comm, a.k.a. Marc Richter's accompaniment at Berlin's Asian Film Festival and the Unsound Festival in Krakow (both in 2010), he decided to commit it to record. In Marc's own words: 'Most of the music was composed under the influence of heavy pain killers while recovering from a broken leg. The music (like the film) is about slowness and decay, states of unconsciousness, sleeping and waking up, dying and being reborn. The film basically is a post-apocalyptic collage based on paintings by classical European painters (Caravaggio, Delacroix, Rembrandt, Gericault) -- the music tries to translate that concept employing similar collage-based sampling techniques using loops made from vintage vinyl and shellac records combined with acoustic and electronic instrumentation and voice.' Richter's already formidable expressive power stretches over all of EARTH. Reflecting the countless cyclical forces that make up, oh, more or less everything we know and are, the music on EARTH is bracing, lovely, bustling and still, and at times bittersweet, a commingling of sensations and emotions that can't be neatly separated from one another. (EARTHis complex, as you know.) Guests on EARTHinclude David Aird, a.k.a Vindicatrix (on the Mordant Music label), contributing startling vocal work; Renate Nikolaus on an array of instruments and noise devices; Rutger Zuydervelt (singing bowls); and Christopher Kline (singing saw). EARTH is Black to Comm's seventh album and his debut for De Stijl, following the acclaimed Alphabet 1968 (on Type) and last year's vinyl-only collaboration with Mike Kelley of Destroy All Monsters (on the En/Of label)."

Artist:	BLACK TO COMM
Title:	Charlemagne & Pippin
Label:	DIGITALIS
Format:	CD
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	ACE 026CD

"Marc Richter's new Black to Comm offering Charlemagne & Pippin churns out a slowly, methodically building single-tone battleship, that somehow manages to become more powerful, hopeful, and grandiose as it oscillates. Richter's characteristic organ noise is rounded off beautifully with various electronics, bells, metal percussion, toys, water, and violins, provided by band members Renate Nikolaus and Ulf Schütte, which grow around the central note yet slowly move to the center themselves. The bursting electronics, white noise, and buzzes become more frequent and attempt to overpower the mighty organ. Together, these three musicians bring about a musical pairing that suits the title. A pairing of power and play, father and son, age and youth. It's probably best to turn the lights off and the speakers up for this meditative 35 minute slab of drone excellence."

Artist:	BLACK TO COMM
Title:	Alphabet 1968
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 053CD

This is the debut full-length for Marc Richter aka Black To Comm for the Type label. Richter is no newcomer to the experimental music scene. As the figurehead of the Hamburg-based Dekorder label, the musician and designer has brought countless oddities to the attention of rabid music fans in the last few years, but it is with his own compositions that he has made the biggest splash. Releasing for a plethora of labels including Digitalis, Trensmat, and of course, his own imprint, he has pioneered a new, organic drone sub-genre using tape loops, vintage organs and an inexhaustible swamp of found sounds. With this latest album however, it was Richter's intention to move away from the epic drones he had made his own and into something more "classic." The mission statement for Alphabet 1968 was to write an album of "songs" for want of a better word. Short tracks which represented genre points, the milestones which stuck in Richter's mind when he thought back to his favorite records. What we arrive at is a breathtaking 10-track album which, over the course of 45 minutes, explores world music, techno, noise, avant-garde, ambient music and even exotica. Each track is linked with a loose thread of radio static or environmental sound, dragging you through the album, as if tuning in to a stray broadcast or a particularly adventurous mix. Richter has pieced the album together from hours of recordings made at his studio with home made gamelan, small instruments and loops gathered from a collection of ancient vinyl and 78 records. The scope of the album is admirable, but ignoring this, it is simply a shockingly arresting collection of experimental oddities, with references ranging from Moondog to Basic Channel by way of Bernard Herrmann. It's not hard to fall in love with Alphabet 1968, far harder would be to place exactly where the record should fit into your collection.

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