With the proliferation and, in a sense, success of club culture, minimal house and techno often seem mired in a certain ubiquity. The effort now is to try and exorcize this achieved form, to adjust the rhythmic elements or pillage motifs from other genres. More often than not, these inclinations churn out something akin to aural toxic excrement – music whose corrosive, pungent touch leaves one in a strangely drowsy torpor.
This debut full-length from Marit Posch engages in such an attempt to find a certain fragility in the bedrock of her compositions, to break them up and reassert a certain depth and weight about their movements. To this end, she infects these works, firmly entrenched in the East Berlin minimal techno tradition, with elements from her background in classical composition and her fascination with straight-out dance music. The ensuing work thus features a broad palette of textures and harmonies, bookmarked by halting, jerking rhythms, gurgling synthesizers, sickly strings and Posch’ floating vocals.
Having said that, the results are oftentimes mixed. For the most part, a faintly brooding sweep of sound pivots around the lilt and lurch of a rhythm, which though uneasy and awash with vim and vigor, never morphs or dissolves into something alien or other over the course of a track. As a result, compositions take on numerous parts – from the deep rolling guitar patterns found in ‘Sweet Thunderheads’ to the dewy ambience and sweet flute melody of ‘Capricorn Saltlick’ – but ones which never impinge, overlap or interact, but which continue amicably along their own respective planes.
All the same, moments do arise when these parts are pieced together in a pleasing manner. ‘Gestern Morgen’, for instance, features a sprightly guitar arpeggio which proves infectious when set against snapping beats, acid squiggles and polymorphous tone clusters. Gradually, with the aid of Apparat, ‘Passage To Silence’ breaks out of its structured repetition and post-techno modulations, carried away by a robust dance beat and anthemic chorus. As these breathers are encircled by the other works, though, their laconic light is slowly subsumed by a convivial nullity.
Max Schaefer
