Browse by Artist: SENKING

Artist:	SENKING
Title:	Ping/Thaw
Label:	KARAOKE KALK (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	KK 004CD

"Senking AKA Jens Massel delivers his second full length CD on DJ Strobocop's Karaoke Kalk, and it definitely expands on his aesthetic of the seeming hybridization of Klaus Schulze's Cyborg and Black Ark Studios ca. 1975. Which is to say that his records aren't necessarily defined by their bottom and so much as their bottomless end. Evolving rhythms, distant loops and enough affinity with the Sound of Cologne to encourage setting your CD player on repeat, your strobe light on catatonic and relaxing on a bed made of marshmallows." -- Billy Kiely. "Jens says that he's mostly inspired by the mu-Ziq LP Tango n Vectif, all the Sea And Cake records, early Aphex Twin stuff and the last Talk Talk LP Laughing Stock. Where 'Ping' showed him flirting with the enthusiasm of the the dancefloor, the four pieces of 'Thaw' turn their back on: the vexation, the contrary, the unexpected moves in the centre of interest. Now gloomy, now gay, now sweet and tender crackling, now harsh and pitiless banging -- each track leads any musical rule and settlement up the garden path. Jens Massel's playful keenness on experimenting is neither drifted away nor silly, his open-mindedness neither tense-up nor naive. It's fun to take part in his artistic development and fun to listen how much fun he has in developing his skills. In one breath Senking carries you away and leaves you disturbed behind."

Artist:	SENKING
Title:	List
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 077CD

Originally released in 2007. Is there beauty in what is threatening? With List, Senking introduces 40 minutes of the darkest matter and reckons, yes. He varies and experiments with a -- for Raster-Noton -- frightening diversity of sounds. He reveals the pieces as sound-collages, as quotes, which seem to refer to splatter movies and film noir. Following the tremendous plot of his endtime-subject, he persistently welds together sound spaces in order to compress them later into overwhelming drone-sounds. These as such, then go to serve a fundamental purpose -- as an environment for minimalistic themes and melodies, always to be driven by the ever present slow-beat of the pieces. Nonetheless, the syntax, the destiny of each single piece is highly varied and has the appearance of a much more mature composition, compared to his earlier works. Remarkably, the technical aspect does not take a leading role in Senking's anti-utopia visions. It's about substantial and age-old patterns, about impulses and the inevitable. Comparable to a tracking shot, the sound masses are flowing grey and drama-laden towards their final purpose -- seeming to follow the ductus of the opening piece -- let's go.

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