Martin Eugen Rubenstein’s debut album raabenstein_esk has quite a number of glorious angles to it, beyond the obvious sense of the album as an accumulation of jazz inspired electronica, welding numerous beat structures with both open and broken renditions. Clearly the Mark Gisbourne intoned poetry of Rabbenstein, in its curt and perfunctory rendition underscores its gleeful cynicism towards subjects such as Christianity in ‘Carpetbagger Part I & II’ to the demolition job on iconic images of wisdom in ‘Rain over Devon’. In ‘Gutterface’, the straight lay down vocal style “hark hark/the dogs bark/the bankers are coming to town..” renders a circular mode of noting the noters noting, so to speak. Detailing harbingers propensity for knocking over subjects in the very same mode is peculiar, even with the dry rendition, but I suppose that is where the humor exists. My favorite is a brash reworking of “The Queen of Hearts” nursery rhyme in ‘One for Sunken Eyes’ , whose dystopic hatchet is tweaked with dubbed out echoes just to add that extra ounce of wistful nuance.
While the lyrics can thus be described, the real beauty is the intricate construction and programming. Take the downtempo ‘Rain over Devon’ which struts its groove amongst shredded banjo strings and the wailing trombones of Uwe langer. Rabbenstein instills a maximum of experimentation with frameworks that are effective, while not limiting and it is the play with the edges of form and formlessness that makes this album a joy and not a collapsible mess of noise that sometimes substitutes for experimentation. Or ‘Counter Esk’ with its scratched out house influenced movement accompanied by a cut up stutter vocal, permanent hesitation as accent playing against an insistent infectious groove. Or ‘Island Patois’ with its clunky industrial entrance underscored by funk guitar insistence that remakes the mould and introduces jazz influenced melodic keyboard motifs. All the tracks here are patois of one form or the other, if all we are talking about is a nonstandard language understood by those who have the ability or inclination to speak or listen to the idea of fused concepts. raabenstein_esk as a whole is characteised by its immaculate production values, the accessibility and lack of pretension within its idea of experimentation. It is far too intelligent example to be popular or inspire a movement but maintains a cogent atmosphere throughout and is a gem that will travel far with the listener. By far the best listening I have had this year.
Innerversitysound
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