A scarring sonic gouge establishes an outlook of urgent intensity on Kassel Jaeger’s debut full-length. Jaeger revels in a tide of pollutants, crosscurrents of electronic grit and grime, and colliding streams of untamed signals. Samples, often heavily processed so as to be virtually unrecognizable, proliferate like algae, submerged in a welter of soft, yet occasionally sibilant noise.
In revealing himself to be an astute observer of a number of musical forms (microsound, dark ambient, drone, musique concrete, noise), the tracks here are forced to reveal very little else. Rather they rest in the cracks between these musical territories, where a fluid feel of contrast is at work, and where there secrets remain delightfully distant. See “Supra” where the sharply accentuated staccatos perforate the choppy yet buoyant texture to give the piece a heightened level of internal discussion; or the following track, “Contra”, in which a monotonous percussive buzz gradually disintegrates into a fairly harsh pounding tone before slowly reforming itself, all the while accompanied by ragged high-pitched tones and other audible scratches and scrapings.
Within the appearance of rawness, seductive and thus controlled subtleties may be teased out from the thicket – faint laptop manipulations and shifts of emphasis that add a lightness of presence, and strengthen the tense modulations of the albums emotional complexion. This tentative musing, combined with a fierce eloquence, makes for a sound that needles its way into one like the best of riddles.
Max Schaefer
