|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2LP
|
|
UR 149LP
|
After two years, Carl and Andreas present their second album, and once again, it opens up a wide associative space. The uncommon instrumentation is striking: a church organ, harpsichord, glass tubes, and more. Like their first album The Aporias of Futurism (UR 133LP, 2021), it is mysterious and dark. But it also carries a strong touch of rebellion and adrenaline, sometimes quite pointedly. The pieces are now shorter and feature intricate yet irresistible rhythms. The impact is immediate, yet it maintains a sense of solemnity and ceremony. Music for Unknown Rituals oscillates between primitive instincts and avant-garde intrigues. The process began in Döblitz, a small village on the Saale river in Germany, inside an old church that houses an organ built in 1886 by Johann Adolph Ibach. Carl and Andreas gained access and secluded themselves there for a few days, accompanied by the organ, an instrument made of glass tubes, and a set of modular synthesizers. After recording the basic tracks in Döblitz, the work continued in Munich and Berlin. Carl played electric guitars, harpsichord, bass, metallophone, xylophone, Indian harmonium, and various percussive instruments. Andreas added layers of electronic sounds, noises, and atmospheric drones. He also created percussive structures extracted and derived from recorded material of technical and industrial noises, which contrasted with the acoustic drums played by Carl. The antithetical approach continues with the dichotomous arrangement of the instruments, often panned hard left and right in the stereo field, creating an antiphonic communication. Some parts, especially the use of the electric guitar, evoke memories of the psychedelic sixties. However, this is anything but a nostalgic album -- these musical references are merely remnants, set pieces, and fragments used from a contemporary, post-modern, post-youth-cultural, and post-romantic perspective. Although Andreas and Carl continue on their chosen path of composing music with an almost literary narrative structure, this album is conceptually and formally completely different from their first effort.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
2LP
|
|
UR 133LP
|
This double album is a new collaboration between long-time Umor Rex artists Andreas Gerth (one half of Driftmachine) and Carl Oesterhelt (11 Pieces for Synthesizer). Both developed their shared musical cosmos during their time with the now defunct Tied +Tickled Trio. Oesterhelt is also known for his solo compositions for orchestras and for collaborations with Johannes Enders and Hans-Joachim Irmler of Faust. As futurism seems inherent to electronic music, the backward-looking view is alien to its nature -- consequently, a dialectical struggle between these principles is rarely expressed with the means of electronics. Especially today, its essence as a medium of progress stands in opposition to a skeptical position. The Aporias Of Futurism seeks to define a critical location, that stands in opposition to the postmodern concept of interpretation, deconstruction and reformulation and the belief in progress that goes with it. The working method for the album Andreas and Carl followed was the usual musique-concrète-technique -- cut/assemble/edit/process pre-recorded sounds -- but instead of deconstructing the concrete noises into an abstract sound entity, they followed a different path: the organic interweaving of orchestral structures with the electronically processed noise layers into a composition in the sense of classical modernism at the beginning of the 20th century. Carl started with sketches recorded via a broken CD player, processed through a ring modulator, which sounded like old electronic music from the 1950s. To interact with these fragments Andreas recorded and processed a plethora of everyday noises, atmospheres, tonal fragments from the modular, industrial and shortwave radio noise, percussion in the form of door slamming, falling metal sheets, ball tracks, and so on. So, while they still played within the futuristic discipline, the reference to the past is actually unmistakable. One can hear it in the tonality of the contrasting orchestral passages, in the sound character of the processed samples and the sonic electronic layers. Free associations of concepts, books and authors from a wide period of time, such as Milton's Paradise Lost, William Blake, Robert Graves, ancient Rome, as well as Borges and Juan Rulfo. This flood of images is also incorporated on the album cover as a "free interpretation" of cultural objects and their relations in time. The overarching motif of a skeptical rejection of the idea of Futurism is illustrated by a quote from Emile M. Cioran, the writer who most closely embodies the common spirit of the work presented here. Gatefold sleeve; includes download code; edition of 300.
|
|
|
|