Wolfgang Voigt - Kafkatrax 1

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  • Wolfgang Voigt's music, when he's in the Freiland Klaviermusik kind of mood, bears similarities to early 20th century atonal music. Schoenberg, for example, developed the twelve-tone technique (an early example of serialism) in which all notes of the chromatic scale are played the same number of times, and none emphasised. Concept over beauty. In Kafkatrax, Voigt has densely overlaid clippings from a Franz Kafka audio tape to evoke the same surreal, distorted claustrophobia of his countryman's novels. I've always admired serialism for its analytical and experimental bluntness, and I'm glad it exists. But I can barely stand to listen to the stuff. Minus the voices, these trax consist only of a Spartan beat and bassline. The first is a house stomp, the second similar but with a swung bounce, and both are at regular house tempo. Few, though, will want to play these out, and that's because of the impenetrable mire of voices that fall over each other with little clear form over the whole of the tracks. There's not much in the way of tonality, either. The whole impression is like a brown mud, sliding around—in pitch, time, syllable—like a thick swamp current. On the second side, he eases up a bit, with more space for the rhythm to breathe, and the effect of the voices is more to create microrhythms. It's more approachable as a result. I don't speak much German, so rhythm and timbre is all I get out of them. (It may well be that the meaning adds something important.) The general gist of things, I'd wager though, would remain the same. This is an art piece for sure, and it succeeds in its impenetrably Kafkaesque aims. I'm just still not sure whether I love it or hate it.
  • Tracklist
      A Kafkatrax 1.1 B Kafkatrax 1.2
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