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CD Feature/ Tomas Korber: "effacement"

  Tobias

Some records are effortlessly made and extremely hard to enjoy (take harsh noise releases for instance). “effacement” must have been the exact opposite – a highly fascinating listen and very likely mind-wrecking to produce. After all, the guts, the stemina, the dedication, the trust in oneself and one’s music and the courgae to produce an album as radical and idiosyncratic as this, usually don’t come easy.

For there is hardly an artists out there who does not, at least for the glimpse of an eye, think of his or her listener’s expectations. And “effacement” does quite a bit to confuse them. Think of the sound of a ping pong ball grinding to a halt again and again. Then add to that the crackling and snapping  of a fireplace, of a bycicle wheel turning on its axis and of a vacuum cleaner imitating a fire alarm. Then suppose all of this were starting from a point of almost complete silence and growing in intensity for almost twenty minutes, until the delicate sounds have turned into a frenzied generator, rotating like a washing machine in free fall. That is about what you can expect of the first track, “Thermo”, and it doesn’t even come close to tapping the full potential of the album. Microscopic particles, hissing  and high-pitched tones are the red thread of a work, which is homogenous enough to create a world of its own and offers enough surprises to keep the listener awake at all times. Context and volume are important parameters – speach and hints at harmonic development are often hidden behind shwashes of sound and on several occasions Korber deliberately plays trick on his audience’s mind – such as in “Wüste” (meaning: Desert), wher some white noise transforms from a flowing river into a train, then into rain and back again. “Fred Austere” toys with bells and chimes, moving in a tranquil rhythmic pattern, like a peaceful clock work. And after almost an hour of concentrated manipulations, there is a sudden moment of atmospherics, as a deep bass line takes over.

There are long and plentiful passages, in which a single source is left to linger and fully expand and it is these moments which make “effacement” so special. One could well imagine other artists shrinking away from them, but Korber pushes through and shares something intense with the listener. Two years in the making and recorded in three different locations, this may not have come easy. But if this was indeed the case, it has never translated into the music.

By Tobias Fischer

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