Of the three recent Hubro releases that have come across my path, this Brutter album is the one that perhaps pushes experimentation with rhythm to its optimum limits. If you imagine the natural rhythms that are inherent in the sort of music that comes from Africa and has been utilised in the west, then this album attempts to show that there is a whole other approach to rhythm which is almost cerebral.
The Wallumrød brothers who make up Brutter clearly have rhythm as their instinct (Christian is a pianist and Frederic a drummer), but are too curious and searching to allow themselves to be bogged down in the kind of parochial rhythmic structure that is being presented by pretty much all of their contemporaries. Using drum machines, synths and electronics, the duo deconstruct and reconstruct music in their own image, allowing the listener an opportunity to step outside of convention and be swayed by the kind of happy accidents that we could come across on a daily basis, but perhaps ignore. These obviously are not accidents in the brothers’ minds, but carefully constructed sonic pieces that play with our notions of how to listen to and interpret music.
It is a very difficult thing to describe when somebody is precisely mapping sounds that appear to be happening randomly. However, although I say random, it is not the seeming randomness of free jazz or crazy experimentalism. As I say, there is a structure to it that requires the listener to let go of any preconceptions of how music should sound when constructed using these simple elements and just accept and be drawn in. I could attempt to describe some of the sounds that appear, but that is futile. One thing I can say is that there is some form of distance or barrier erected to cocoon the listener from the music. Some of it sounds underwater, some sounds as if played behind a wall in another room, the Doppler effect used in a few of the tracks gives a sense of movement — but movement taking place outside our sphere of reference. There are oscilloscope experiments, there are desolate slow-motion synth drum patterns, muffled explosions and the coil of springs, all adding to a sense of a new language being constructed.I made a few notes whilst listening: “slow rhythm to no rhythm distorted by cushions”, low level explosions, seismic but gentle echoing drums”, “wooden things squeezed into plastic holes”, “lots of people trying to tap in time becoming boisterous, uncontrollable and out of time”.
That was just me trying to make sense of something that is in a realm beyond sense. Anyway, I think you understand and if you really do and feel that people attempting to deconstruct techno and funk and introduce their own rhythmic language is worth investigation, I can’t recommend it highly enough.-Mr Olivetti-
