Michael Ranta
Taiwan Years
Boomkat Product Review:
Stunning archival material from groundbreaking percussionist Michael Ranta - a collaborator with Stockhausen and Conny Plank, highly regarded for his bridging of East/West avantgarde movements - here playing to the breadth of his style between 1971-1978
’Taiwan Years’ supplies another highlight to the Metaphon label (Timo Van Lujik’s home of critical Ranta reissues since 2010) with three durational recordings demonstrating Ranta’s seamless, freeform but disciplined, meld of concrete electronics with Eastern traditions and a singular sort of psychedelic, rhythmic minimalism. Just as he previously had us rapt on the ‘Ranta / Lewis / Plank’ boxset, and a few years ago with the incredible ballet soundtrack ‘Die Mauer’, Ranta’s metric and spatial sensitivities are just breathtakingly uncanny on this collection, too, speaking to a genuinely remarkable sense of timing, tone and proprioception that makes his recordings here comparable with the elemental works of Annea Lockwood as much as David Behrman’s inquisitive minimalism, or the esoteric psychedelia of his former collaborators, Takehisa Kosugi and Toshi Ichiyanagi.
In chronological order, Ranta’s ‘Taiwan Years’ covers the period before he would settle down as the resident composer, percussionist, and instrument handler, at Asian Sound in Cologne. It opens in 1971 with ‘Kagaku Henka’, a slow, beguiling 18 minutes of mind-bending electronic tones and microcosmic rhythms recalling Group Ongaku and Marginal Consort works, before really drawing us into his style of ultra sound-sensitive psychedelia on a 1973 recording of thizzing electronics and location recordings of distant drums and vocals that calls to mind Roland Kayn meeting Peter Christopherson circa The Threshold Houseboys Choir era. And 1978’s ‘Bei Nacht’ ideally brings the set to a close with a pineal-squeezing stretch of gamelan and resonant synth magick that will keep dreamers right at the edge of a hypnic jerk.
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Edition of 500. CD and 12 page booklet in gatefold cardboard sleeve.
Out of Stock
Boomkat Product Review:
Stunning archival material from groundbreaking percussionist Michael Ranta - a collaborator with Stockhausen and Conny Plank, highly regarded for his bridging of East/West avantgarde movements - here playing to the breadth of his style between 1971-1978
’Taiwan Years’ supplies another highlight to the Metaphon label (Timo Van Lujik’s home of critical Ranta reissues since 2010) with three durational recordings demonstrating Ranta’s seamless, freeform but disciplined, meld of concrete electronics with Eastern traditions and a singular sort of psychedelic, rhythmic minimalism. Just as he previously had us rapt on the ‘Ranta / Lewis / Plank’ boxset, and a few years ago with the incredible ballet soundtrack ‘Die Mauer’, Ranta’s metric and spatial sensitivities are just breathtakingly uncanny on this collection, too, speaking to a genuinely remarkable sense of timing, tone and proprioception that makes his recordings here comparable with the elemental works of Annea Lockwood as much as David Behrman’s inquisitive minimalism, or the esoteric psychedelia of his former collaborators, Takehisa Kosugi and Toshi Ichiyanagi.
In chronological order, Ranta’s ‘Taiwan Years’ covers the period before he would settle down as the resident composer, percussionist, and instrument handler, at Asian Sound in Cologne. It opens in 1971 with ‘Kagaku Henka’, a slow, beguiling 18 minutes of mind-bending electronic tones and microcosmic rhythms recalling Group Ongaku and Marginal Consort works, before really drawing us into his style of ultra sound-sensitive psychedelia on a 1973 recording of thizzing electronics and location recordings of distant drums and vocals that calls to mind Roland Kayn meeting Peter Christopherson circa The Threshold Houseboys Choir era. And 1978’s ‘Bei Nacht’ ideally brings the set to a close with a pineal-squeezing stretch of gamelan and resonant synth magick that will keep dreamers right at the edge of a hypnic jerk.
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