One of the now increasingly few (unofficial) sons of pioneers Raster Noton and Mille Plateaux, the Nuremberg label’s two latest EPs – 22.38 from Electroton-meister Weiss (Martin), and Rezykla, with accomplice, Soltau (Thorsten) – display a similar, perhaps even more restricted, code of 2-D concrète and robo-groove.
[Electroton Shop] Post-digital electronica clinic, Electroton, pursues its uber-minimalist operations with a largely appropriated aesthetic. One of the now increasingly few (unofficial) sons of pioneers Raster Noton and Mille Plateaux, the Nuremberg label’s two latest EPs – 22.38 from Electroton-meister Weiss (Martin), and Rezykla, with accomplice, Soltau (Thorsten) – display a similar, perhaps even more restricted, code of 2-D concrète and robo-groove. Informed also by electronic music’s early avant construction as well as late-period deconstruction, their glitch worship is observed through different devotionals, Weiss with sliced and diced soundfiles and skipping CD’s, Soltau through a mix of concrète and plundered data carriers.
Rezykla contains two pieces from Soltau and Weiss, each deconstructive of the other. Soltau sources sounds from Weiss’s Rephlex, and razes their erstwhile throb and sputter to the granular ground, the results, especially Soltau’s, not just unfluffy but positively begrudging comfy ambience. “Rezykla3,” for instance, is content to thread twists of device noise and slivers of android mandible chatter through a thin-lipped drone, disturbed by the odd random clunk. “Rezykla7” (audio clip below) dredges a bit more signal from liminal noise, an enhanced hum, a more coloured monochrome that’s almost attractive, before playing hard to get again with irruptions from wooden clonks and hollow judders. Soltau’s saves are one man’s cold meat to another man’s recycle bin poison. Simple pleasure-needy ears will be happier with Weiss’s re-heats, as he reverses Soltau’s revisions back to homelier Rephlex base. More approachable in his click language’s allusions to idioms of pop and club, Weiss sets “01.Rezykla” on a skittery rhythm course with click-cut syncopations drawn from noto notions. Pitched flutings mimetic of melody add colourform to stick-figure rhythms, as kinetic specks and flecks work the sounding body out from a centre left evacuated by Soltau. “02.Rezykla” gets into a similar cyber-groove, hitching a Raster-ized funk-pulse to distorto-bites and road-crash car-skid refs. The hangover from Chemnitz and Frankfurt doesn’t inhibit the micro-party; in fact, there’s a freshness and energy to make this less rehash than refresh. Sparks of Artificial Intelligence come from a felicitous encounter between interstices of errorist microsonics and neo-electro jerks and quirks. Rezykla also embeds a small conceptual conceit, a curfew of five minutes precisely imposed on each inhabitant. A playful parody of Teutonic precision? A passing comment on the arbitrariness of musical time? You decide.
Weiss dresses up 22.38 with a minimalism studied to the point of self-parody – tracks numbered one to five, timings as titles, cover letting only those few fragments of sans serif font impinge on its blank white expanse. The artifacts housed within are the product of a similar dissecting-table pointilism, compositions of cut-out shapes in secondhand daylight, serially sliced till the pattern secreted in their suture is revealed. Needle-sharp timbres from imploded data – whirr, rat-a-tat, splatter-patter – are folded and tucked by Weiss into loose formations, wriggling, jagging, tethered to a funk simulacrum grid that provides a centre that strains to hold. Sound architecture operates with a deliberately reduced scheme, tracks differences nuanced so 22:38 seems a single statement with variations on a theme: “03.22.38” hiccups and twitches in monochrome; “05.22.38” pares down Ryoji Ikeda, softens SND, rounds Oval; “04.22.38” wheezes hints of harmony, with a funky flutter of lashes from under sharp-cut beat brows, making you realize Weiss’s quiet riot of clicks’n’cuts and slasher flicker rhythms is actually cuddlier than you thought. For all its juddery and slippery exterior, it presents with a purity of intent, possessed of an almost Zen sense of constraint and poise within. Those with an unsated appetite for avant-pop-art-tech a la Microstoria, ears pricked for the patter of tiny CD-skips, alert to Kraut-motorik abstractions, may take to this pleasantly pulsating porous clicktechno. Overall, the rigidity of method nevertheless allows for a certain jouissance to be found in the play of its narcotic twitch-rhythm, watching Weiss drip mercury drops of sinetone fizzing onto hot circuitry. But ultimately both releases show Electroton to be characterized by a steely single-mindedness of approach, a hermetic insistence that brooks no textural frivolity or harmonic soppiness characterize this inquiry into the essence of frequency. Only hardcore labcoat techies need apply.
22.38 and Rezkla are out now on Electroton. [Electroton Shop]
[audio:http://igloomag.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/soltau_rezykia7.mp3|titles=Soltau “Rezykla7”]
[audio:http://igloomag.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/weiss_02.22.38.mp3|titles=Weiss “02.22.38”]
