German artist Burkhard Friedrich has previously worked with opera and a sense of the operatic informs his latest multi-media production Citta Utopica. Even without the visual component there’s a sense of textural density and full-spectrum coverage, Friedrich treating the various sonic layers much like theatrical elements, ensuring full dynamic range is reached, thoroughly, but patiently. The single 55 minute piece is part drone, part electro-acoustic montage, a rich, multi-tiered mysterious ocean of sound, which works wonderfully as blind abstract audio procession.
After a portentous rumble, akin to pitched down aircraft engines, bursts of static start to intrude, alongside twinkling runs of dinky synthetic chimes. These return throughout the recording, either as trebly jazzy keyboard riffs or as repetitive warning tones, or somewhere between the two. We also get clunky organ stabs, spacey synth sweeps and blasts, gasping accordion-like wheezes and chattering metallic clinks, high, low and in-between, well-spaced, measured, resistant to clutter. This latter detail is Friedrich’s real achievement, as it would be all too easy to switch into overdrive, letting the wacky-tabacky take charge and the music to froth into a molten mess. Instead we get the dying gasps of his Casio collection, well tempered and remarkably articulate for such hoarse-throated creatures.
Joshua Meggitt
