For better or worse, having full-time employment has certainly changed my relationship with music. After hours, more intense or demanding music can find itself being pushed back in favour of sugary, escapist pop music. Other times, all I want to do is have quiet, gentle and therapeutic music playing when at home.
The latest release from Berlin-based electronic musician Marcus Rehmet under his Marow moniker – Inter -certainly fits this bill. Although Rehmet is dealing with mostly electronic textures, it is striking how natural and untreated it all sounds. Foregoing any rhythmic elements present in his recent work, it is a very slow-moving and minimal – yet spatial – record, comparable to the works of Tim Hecker or Stars of The Lid. But whereas those acts’ songs twist and turn, Marow has made something far more based in stasis and drone – it is a peaceful and easy album to listen to in many ways, but no less rewarding because of it. It can feel quite enveloping at times, but I wouldn’t call this escapist music as such – it is a particularly intimate album and moves so slowly that you really have a sense of yourself listening. It doesn’t take my mind elsewhere so much as it comforts and slows down images of the everyday.
Ideal for headphone listening in solitude, Inter is quite stunning in how it can feel so still, yet so fluid at the same time. It’s a very welcoming and inhabitable album, and is available now through the Klitorik website.
Wyatt Lawton-Masi
