Timo Reuber‘s fifth solo album finds him plucking sounds from his collection of samples and loops mixed in with a few restricted-instrument selections, and spewing them out in the visceral statement of intent which is opening track “Ring Ring.” And it does just that, in layers recursive loops which bounce off each other like an clockwork piano miniature. Deliberately lo-fi, it and two accompanying hi/lo tech electro miniatures “Ringer,” “Ring Frei” and “Ringfest” neatly bracket and counterpoint the album’s centrepiece seventeen-minute title track, which swirls into clarity from a fizzling static cloud, bubbling and phasing around the central amorphous rhythms.
What might best be described as a faux-tribal chug propels the main loop, wrapped in a fug of FX and mysterious sound sources. Reuber explicitly places this album in the realms of komische musik, and the connection to the Seventies underground is one which develops more (or perhaps less) clearly with each step and jog of the piece, trickles of synth and fragmentary pianos tumbling around a lurching undercarriage which hints at Can‘s rattly space workouts on Soon Over Babaluma. What’s particularly gratifying is that he doesn’t let the demands of pleasantness get in the way of letting the loops whirl their own determined way into a chaos of noise and discordance, the whole elevated into the brain-blanching heights where music is no longer the main concern, but surviving the plunge into the sonic abyss which is constantly being drawn closer and closer.
-Tango-Mango-
