- For their latest release on their own Lan Muzik label, Exercise One, the duo of Ingo Gansera and Marco Freivogel, have crafted a jam-packed, oxymoronic minimal bomb. Branching out from their less impressive earlier efforts on which they picked perfunctorily at the miniature bits and bites of Mobilee tradition, ‘12 Years’ finds them riding bareback through more percussive, less clinical terrain, and the results are outstanding.
Both sides here are minimal in the Villalobos sense: long, percussive and flat, but rhythmically complex and rammed with information. '12 Years' opens around a lightly throbbing sonar pulse which gradually fades from view, letting the insectoid chatter, tuned rim-shots and a descending melody of blippy 16th notes take charge. As these elements dig in their heels a brash, truncated clap emerges - on the off note - and the percussion grows increasingly threatening. The pulse returns, revealing itself as a treated rim-shot, blanched acid squelches shimmer and fade, and the descending melody wavers in and out of sync as the whole slowly gives itself up.
'Yellow Crystal Seed' is less immediate but arguably stronger and works, like Luciano and Melchoir's 'Father', by flipping a simple three note bass pulse around four bars, revealing new rhythms with each bar. Hats hiss like an angry cat, the snare is given a bebop rattling, and the clap is as snappy as on side 1. Details dance like fireflies - a cicada whine swirls beside percussive taps on glass, wood and tin - and, again like Father, there's vocals: a male Jamaican drawl and a female muttering in Spanish. The whinny of a robotic horse prompts memories of Und's ‘Rodeo’ but it’s all in the service of the bass and drums, hammered out for 12 minutes.
The blurb states that these tracks were built from live material and that is how it sounds: simple drum patterns, a wonky melody / bassline, and from there all hell breaks loose. I can hear the Raum kids going crazy right now.