Sturm : Sturmgesten

[kurt <supine@xxxxxxxx>]

well, it looks like this thing has been out for months, but I just got it and am enjoying my period of consumer perplexion...

Sturm (Reinhard Voigt): Sturmgesten

Minimalism which reminds me more of the visual art world than the musical one. That is, an exhibition of strictly related pieces, offering an immediate overall aesthetic impression, the variation between pieces seemingly based on formal variation. Like, um, I dunno, a Donald Judd exhibition of varied plywood boxes. In the case of Sturmgesten, the basic unit upon which the series is based seems to be a slowed-down (or pitch shifted) fragment of what sounds like bass guitar or piano notes. Specifically two notes, at the interval of a minor third. Sludge dimly heard in the background suggests traces of other sounds. At any rate, the low pitched notes toggle back in forth in patterns with slight, unpredictable deviations. (imagine a cut-up version of Howling Wolf's "Spoonful": "Spoon full spoon full spoon spoon spoon full full spoon [etc]) The first variation suggests a 3/4 rhythm, later ones suggest more extended meters. A knob is turned somewhere in Reinhard Voigt's studio and the upper partials are heightened, and  other notes blossom like a dialtone from the deep. Finally, as a reward to the beleaguered listener, the final track gets a full production with drums and other fun sounds, and our favorite two notes seem to finally be functioning murkily as the bassline of a dark little psychedelic toe-tapper.

I think the nicest thing about it is the ironic descrepency between the cover art, which suggests a box of German chocolate wafers, and the chocolate-y dark, but otherwise quite sugarless, brooding, alienating sound of the slowed-down sample endlessly looped and spliced within. 

The strategy of minimal, alogical variation no longer has intrinsic conceptual appeal for me, it only reminds me of how much more effectively it's been used elsewhere (decades before in "Watt" by Samuel Beckett, or Ad Reinhart's black paintings for instance), and how it's become an rote signifier of cool discretion in the visual artworld. 

I don't know. Maybe it's the perfect dark background music for that late night leather sex scene you've been meaning to get round to.