The electronic music-underground in the Ruhr Area is not too big. Visiting the right concerts and parties, you meet the same people each weekend. And although it feels a bit rural from time to time, quality ain’t the parameter to mourn about. It was back in 2005 when Martin Juhls introduced me to Mal Hoeschen, a stalwart guy who runs the nice Genesungswerk label. His industrial Ambient-band [multer] is one of the most sincere acts to have emerged from the dungeons of Dortmund, and I was happy to find a package of fresh Genesungswerk-stuff in the letterbox a week later. Recently, we met at a Milhaven show, and once again Mal got something for me: the “Mormor LP” by Bremen-based one man-band Tarkatak. Packed in a delightful cardboard-box with hand painted (!) artwork, Lutz Pruditsch a.k.a. Tarkatak delivers four very long pieces of energetic ambient noise, somewhere between electro-acoustic Krautrock, Industrial and maybe Minimal Music.
The album opens with “Foerfaeder“. Unhurriedly, Pruditsch fades-in some bizarre scraping sounds. He adds a dense layer of field-recordings that remains in the back like morning haze. After quite a while, a tonal synthesizer-motive is introduced. With a very low pitch and low-frequent modulation, the sound make me think of a water propeller stuck in the mud, fighting for every turn. The elements mix very well and seem to interfere with each other to build new sounds and textures. Rich. While the back of the songs continuously develops, new, more precise elements emerge. Panning from the left to the right channel, a synthetic sound like a flying stick appears. Pruditsch introduces the main melodic element at half time of “Foerfaeder“: a simple melodic cascade of tones, dubbed with long-lasting delay, repeated over and over, Thinner-style. The whole song oscillates in upward spirals till minute 18 and fades for the last four minutes decently. The only sound that’s left are some strangely looped field-recordings you can’t remember to have heard before.
Second tune “Hav-Intet Amande” begins with a clean vibraphone-motive in high repetition that sounds like a reminiscence to the early Steve Reich. Tiny digital tones join the loop while a massive layer of deep drones rise from the back of the song. These sounds make me alternately think of the dominant bass-guitar of a [multer]-song or the smooth, orchestral brass-section Huw and Otto of Nest like to use. The vibraphone gets replaced by an arrangement of looped, inverted and entangled vocal-samples I don’t like too much (maybe just a personal view but I think experimental music can do more about vocals than this). Arising from the backup b(r)ass-section, a beautiful cello replaces the vocal-composition and underlines the orchestral character of the whole song. A sound like bells makes up for the fade out, laden with reverb and delay. Huge!
While “Foerfaeder” and “Hav-Intet Amande” come up with a rather industrial respectively orchestral version of Ambient, title track “Mormor” has a real beat, vocals and melodies. Starting with beautiful little synthesizer-sounds and nice analogue cracklings, a simple vocal-loop is introduced very soon. Single stage piano chords create a somehow jazzy atmosphere, and a female voice says something ‘bout “Mormor” in Swedish (?). Then, an up-tempo bassline establishes itself as the main composition motive, accomplished by some simple beats. For the second half of the song, a noisy feedback melody takes over, harmonically grounded by the stage-piano chords from the beginning.
Finally, “Foerklinga” combines the instrumental density of “Hav-Intet Amande” with the gloomy autism of “Foerfaeder“. Build from two loops of clean electric guitar plus massive reverberation, “Foerklinga” develops a strong sedation character. The aesthetical idea is more Philipp Glass than Steve Reich, especially when the string come in after six minutes. In a clever technical twist, the reverberation-flag turn out to get louder than the actual instruments afterwards. The effect becomes it’s own place in the orchestra, somehow. The tune is degraded layer by layer until everything that’s left is a classic industrial machine beat, a slow pulse that makes up for a good ending.
Get the record here: Mormor
Pre-listen: A mix of extrats from the CD
