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CD Feature/ nobile: "pelktron"

  Tobias

On a purely managerial level, it is not always clear whether a musician is the right person to run a label. From an artistic point of view, however, it is highly commendable. What could, after all, be better to get your creative intent across than actually releasing albums with the music of your choice yourself? Andreas Usenbenz has been active under a plethora of different monikers and already released a digital 3’’ with the tonatom netimprint. “pelktron”, however, is not only just his latest offering but also the first business card of his fledgling record company klanggold. Let’s consider this as a summarised mission statement, then.

As such, it holds the promise of great things to come and delivers on some of them right away. Usenbenz has always been interested in the way a composition can be organised on an atomic level, taking on manifold meanings as one changes the lense’s focus. “mikroogranisation” is the German term for this phenomenon (which we don’t believe needs any translation) as well as the title of the last track on the album, albeit not the only one to feature this principle. Already opener “bahnhof” (“trainstation”, a word full of “points of departure”) takes a similar path, with crackling static and bleeping morse code running over subtle electric discharges, while various overblown recorder motives circle each other in unexpected dissonant harmony. There is a development in each thematic line, enabling the listener to observe either a single one or different sets of combinations and to thus engage in an active dialogue with the work. This openness to various interpretations is a pleasant surprise and signifies a distance from hermetically sealed academic approaches – despite all of the seriousness this music posseses. The virtual (and, when presented on stage, very real) handshake between artificial and natural source material, as well as the equality of spontaneous live improvisation and post-production techniques is a second feature of Nobile and marks this as an always searching, yet warmly organic style with references ranging from jazz (the bouncing bass pluckings of “durch”) to industrial (the deep miniature power plant hummings of “tagtraum”). Never nervous, yet brimming with action and creativity, the pieces glide by in an unhurried fashion, never too abstract too dispell mental pictures and never too concrete to pin everything down. Compared to other players from the genre, “pelktron” has decidedly more headroom.

While each track is full of discoveries, it is probably “renoise” who stands out from the fold, sinply for being different in its linear development and concentration on a single pattern: For over eight minutes, a flangeing choral drone rotates backwards and forwards like a sugar-coated DNA helix against a fairy tale night sky. It is here that the message of klanggold defies being a dogma and turns into a vision which others can fill with their music. Or Usenbenz himself, on a hopefully soon to be released follow-up.

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: Nobile
Homepage: Klanggold Records