INNODE

Gridshifter

Genre: ELECTRONIC

MP3
FLAC

Boomkat Product Review:

Austrian veteran Stefan Nemeth (Radian, Lokai) teams up with drummers Steven Hess (Locrian, Cleared, Pan-American) and Bernhard Breuer (Elektro Guzzi) for an album of powerful, acoustic-electronic improvisations that interrogate and complicate our sense of rhythm. According to eMego, the work was conceived as "a series of crossbred experiments where, on one side, a human rhythm triggers electronic signals whilst on the other electronic textures sculpt a platform for physical human engagement. The stark dynamics and Human/Non Human interaction manifests itself as a thrilling expose of 21st Century rhythm and noise." Certainly these are intense, discombobulating pieces of music, simultaneously generating a feeling of unbending, mathematic formalism - the sort of hard, austerely funky rhythm science one might expect from an Ikeda or Bretschneider record - with a feeling of fragility and fluency, of imminent chaos. This curious effect - "composed disorder" as Innode put it - is the result of the trio applying opposing moves to a template of rigid structure: on some tracks a strict timeline or grid is "spiked" by the playing of grids of a different size at the same time, while on others Hess and Breuer "shift" the grid by laying their own rhythms over the top. It's a rhythmic chess match no less, introspective and strategic, but such is the unpredictability of the destabilised sonic environments Nemeth generates, that it's fascinating to observe and participate in.

MP3 Release (10)