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LABEL PROFILE MOSZ Mosz doesn’t typify what the majority of most electronica labels do; that is, establish an identikit sound and stay the course. Founders Stefan Nemeth (one-third of Radian) and Michaela Schwentner aim to prove that despite approach and taste, substance or style, variety will surely out. Speaking of taste, Rettet Die Wale, the debut from Gustav, is one to either acquire or disavow, and certainly doesn’t avail itself of the piecemeal grandeur so vibrantly splashed across its Photoshopmart cover collage. One-woman band Eva Jantschitsch waxes lyrically in both English and German across nine Neue Deutsch Pop-Elektronische tunes, wrapping her cherubic voice in a percolating womb of accordions, synths, guitars, xylophones, et al, sometimes unblemished, sometimes processed. The confectionary programming belies a rather pungent wit and squinted worldview, so Gustav sings on “One Hand Mona”: “It take seven minutes to prepare the coffee / And four and a half to eat a slice of bread / She always dreamed of a white wedding / But she lost her left arm and married Karl.” The word “instead” seems to dangle there, conspicuous by its absence—Gustav chooses to dangle the participle in dour massed basses and a wheezing electronic orchestra that bulges under the weight of her every breath. At least the raspy, Mego-esque static revolutions instill some rhythmic joie de vivre in the following “Mein Bruder,” five minutes of laptop frizz and thump that leavens some of the leftfield tendencies of what is a unique but often aggravating listen. Boris Hauf emphasizes that Soft Left Onto Westland was completed in the wake of 2004’s tsunami disaster—there is a semblance of sadness amongst Hauf’s electronica, yet this part-time TV Pow member and founder of German laptop dilettantes Efzeg manages to retain a sense of wonder in the midst of such a cataclysm. Practically exuberant are Hauf’s forays into stop/start rhythms, enmeshed in a continually gregarious fabric of short-circuiting ganglia and loopy nervous tics. On the inverse, “Gerry,” for whom the namesake is unknown, is all sunsetting drone, morose machine musings left on infinite delay. What is most striking about this recording is Hauf’s obvious love for his software and its vast resources, shucking off the “trad” and improvisatory jazz environs of Efzeg (there isn’t a sax, or anything remotely acoustic, in sight) for the more vivid static-discharge psychedelia here. But Soft Left is predominantly a discovery of soundsculpting and imaginative outburst—“Tacoma Narrows Bridge” sways through rippling, disembodied dialogics, the respiration of free-falling motors, mudbubbles bursting far below twisting roadway. Quite a brilliant application of ragged-about-the-edges Moszbeat. Martin Brandlmayr and partner Nicholas Bussmann make-up the erstwhile duo Kapital Band 1, whose debut, simply titled 2 CD (one, the legit album itself; the other, a CD-R provided to the purchaser to do with what they will), lifts high Radian’s acoustic bojangles while simultaneously pushing out at the far reaches of the electronic envelope. Opening with a muffled engine roar, the duo rub elbows with the jazz corpus so beautifully dissected by Radian and bury it hip-deep in half-glimpsed, half-speed noise-funk (“Wait”), quicksilver glitch-techno (“The New Car”), and kitchen-sink percussion/laptop asthmatica (“Survival Kit”). Prevalent amidst the variably bruising and balletic carnivals of granular synthesis is Brandlmayr’s keen appreciation of his analog drumkit, whose martial-sharp snare taps and blurry cymbal rides simultaneously juggle incongruity and precision—the percussive fillips interrupt the soundfield in the most unlikely places, yet the effect, which should seem as jarring as an actor bumbling a foreign accent, somehow becomes the ideal foil around which squiggly pulses migrate. Superb mouse-click ‘n’ ‘prov that expands further on the Radian vernacular. Nemeth’s outing on Mosz, 7 Million, hooked up with guitarist Florian Kmet under the name of Lokai, is leagues away from his day-job’s principles, the sounds on this disappointingly brief (37 minutes) long-player vaseline-smeared landscapes suggestive of the Fennesz and Oren Ambarchi type. Kmet parses gentle strums and nylon plucks that are subsequently channeled into Nemeth’s banks of synthetic fog, the final outcomes (titles mysteriously encoded in the finest Autechre tradition) minimal, hazy tracts of longing (“Histoire DS”) or budding kernels of pink distortion (“Mikrostekon”). Admirable in its restraint and painterly in approach, 7 Million is perhaps the most “becalming” disc in the catalog thus far, even when the duo allow their storms of radio-noise to blow gustily out to sea, as during the rather lengthy “Chuuk.” Wafts pleasingly on the ears—move over, Christian, and tell Oren the news. The two gents that are Metalycée could have sprung out of the industrial dank of Berlin (or even the sepulchral twilight of Norway) as easily as from their oil-slicked canals, laying waste to armchair-safe electronica via the ambient-in-guise metal of Another White Album. Seemingly out-of-place within Mosz’s byte-sized archives, Metalycée opt for a kind of low-key laptop prog; tracks such as “21h39” and its twin cousin “5h17” smear Frippian guitar thrak atop stumble-block programming and gingerly-poised USB feedback. “Pianobar” attempts to take a breath but is instantly smothered under an Einstürzende Neubauten-like assault of blitzkrieg gabba snares, while “Slaughtered, Cut and Filleted” might be IDM reinterpreted by some death metal merchant, decapitated beats staggering amongst bludgeoned bass as bits of sax glimpse at the carnage. Textured noise for the hard of hearing, though by no means a symphony of torture a la Merzbow, Another White Album’s attempt at crossover is at best only momentarily diverting, and better consumed in small morsels. He’s taken a respite (or label detour) from Mego HQ, but that doesn’t mean Peter Rehberg has ended his love affair with digitalia diabolus. On Fremdkoerper (German for “foreign body”), the unwary participant lulled into false security by the opening “Mutisil” will get one pulverizing blast from the past when “Scream” rocks the speaker pylons. But the proceedings aren’t all sturm und drang. Over the years, Peter Rehberg (usually under his alias Pita) has morphed into a dazzling composer and expert raw data massager. This recording, created for a choreography by Chris Haring, shows Rehberg’s matured flair and compositional acumen, culled out of aberrant lo-fi plug-in gristle that shows a deft touch for microsonic dynamics. A track such as “Bite Double” might, in the past, have comprised blistering molestations of sound, but Rehberg is better informed by acousmatic resources that are more exploratory than confrontational—Fremdkoerper is colored ambient, Pita-style, and it’s a new direction forged with aplomb. Saving the best for last, Martin Siewert’s No Need To Be Lonesome, much like Hauf’s effort, trades the evocative improv of Siewert’s work in the fab Trapist for some glistening science-blinded electronica. Perhaps it’s been Siewert’s yeoman performances mastering the bulk of the Mosz catalog, or the hours logged working with his bandmates in both Radian and the aforementioned Trapist, but either way, Siewert hasn’t jettisoned his acoustic ways entirely, just simply rewired them to fit into some new circuitboards. These experiments are sensitively realized during the 18-minute forlorn title track, where drumtraps vie for attention amidst flanging organs, synths, curdled guitars and numerous glitch phenomena. And on the finale, “Any Other Way To Go?,” you’re led down a primrose path of walking-tall bass, velcro-ripping beats, and enough pure, joyful electronic FX to make even the Barrons blush, finessed by Siewert’s deft touch and spirited turns-of-phrase. Who’d have thought software could sound so sexy? DARREN BERGSTEIN • www.mosz.org |
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