(03.23.07) Recordings For Rephlex will probably unsettle the more hardcore Rephlex followers, because it’s really beyond any boundary this label had reached during its wide exploration in electronic music. As you know if you heard his previous output on Mego and OR, Hecker (neither Tim, nor Maximillian) is a fierce sound experimenter in the true sense of the word, implementing non-trivial mathematical functions and theories in electronic music.
“Hénon Map & Gingerbread Man (Linear Edit)” does exactly what it says on the tin, just do a search on Wolfram MathWorld to get an idea of what those names mean in chaos theory. “Pulsar Wg’Lett” sounds much like scratching vinyls with your fingernails instead of the needle, whereas “Precedence” tries to distort your perception of space with de-phasing, subtle ticking. In case you were expecting more comfortable noises in a Merzbow fashion, you can enjoy “04 05 I_µdd,” a tipical track that inserted into a spectrum analyzer (e.g. Winamp) gives you those beautiful dense spectra, with every frequency burning with fury. “In Actu (7.1 Edit)” is the richest composition, with a full eleven minutes showcasing pretty much everything Hecker is able to offer, from screeching, intricate clusters of noise to totally alien vortexes that rise from deep bass and mutate into chopped shrieks.
Many braindance listeners will probably find this record nonsensical and wonder if this really means anything to the ear or if it’s purely an applied math project. Some friend of mine did ask me if I actually like this kind of music or if I said so only for the sake of extreme, but my answer is yes, I do enjoy this record, even if it’s not the most played in my collection: I have to be in a very receptive mood, and it’s not that tough once you’ve been raised on a diet of Merzbow, Guilty Connector and Pan Sonic, but maybe it is even sufficient to get a deep listening of Aphex Twin’s Ventolin as an appetizer. I have to admit that being a science geek may help too, you don’t often read nonlinear differential equations in a CD booklet and when it happens, suddenly a freakazoid grin appears on your face.
As a last note, a special mention goes for the artwork, because it’s much more lush than the average Rephlex utterly simple covers: cream colored with pearly glitterings and lovely magenta text… noise is fashionable nowadays, don’t you know?
Recordings For Rephlex is out now on Rephlex. Buy it at Amazon.com.
