There is always an air of mystery surrounding the releases of Marc Richter‘s Black To Comm, and his latest album opens with the most disorientating stumble through memoirs and memories, faded and distressed. His ability to lead the listener gently around the ravages of a stricken mind is never greater than on Ooctye Oil and Stolen Androgens.
“Gustav Metzger As Erwin Piscator, Gera, January 1915” opens the album and takes up half the listening time, drifting in a miasma of dislocated voices, the thrum of a distant dream station, piano and melancholy drones. A deadpan female voice intones a macabre poem as a tired and dispirited male voice describes wartime despair. It is filmic in its scope but monotone in its colouring, every shade of grey and shadow discernible through the smoke and decay. It stumbles and falters, at times all sound drops away and at others it feels as though every sound is somehow being conveyed by the choices made to highlight the story as sound.
It is a magical and foreboding opening that unsurprisingly seems a long way from what follows. A duet of looped vocal tones against a dour piano riff makes up “Stolen Androgens”, where voices are almost soothing and are accompanied by drifting drones that lead into a loop of heavy rain. His vocals always seem so removed and off-kilter, as if heard through a filter or behind doors or walls. You find yourself musing over their original intention as they lead you further off the path. Electronic motifs do crop up like life rafts with which you can steady yourself, unfurling like scattered and elusive clues.
By the time the orchestral swell of “Gepackte Zeit” makes way for the reprise of the poem in the opening section, this time set against piano and unexpected beats, the listener has been taken on quite a journey. Invoking the spirit of German artists, political theatre directors, and Czech writers, it is a tour de force of cultural touchstones, but still wholeheartedly has Marc’s unique fingerprints all over it. His work in general and this piece in particular have no comparison. Black To Comm is in his own desolate but populated field, and Ooctye Oil and Stolen Androgens just strengthens his position.
There is a dreamy quality to his sax playing on Balans and the opening track feels like an introduction to an inner world. Synth tones drift in a similar romantic Angelo Badalamenti vein. There is distance to the piano; but all is welcoming, even the soft flutter of the percussion. There is intimacy here, close-up sounds evolving just for you, a soft air of someone with something special to show.
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There is always an air of mystery surrounding the releases of Marc Richter‘s Black To Comm, and his latest album opens with the most disorientating stumble through memoirs and memories, faded and distressed. His ability to lead the listener gently around the ravages of a stricken mind is never greater than on Ooctye Oil and Stolen Androgens.
