Got a couple of new vinyl records from Marc Richter, the German musician (composer, sound artist) who also records as Black To Comm and curates the Dekorder label in Hamburg. We recall his records as being quite generously laden with layers, edits, events, indicating his skill and fluency with whatever technological tools may be at his disposal to arrange and deploy his rich arrays of material.
For the Diode, Triode (CELLULE 75 CELL-6) LP we see him branching out into what he calls “more abstract, spatial music”, and indeed conducting experiments that could be seen as an update on formal musique concrète methods…matter of fact the first side of this record was realised at the INA GRM studios in Paris. It’s the title track ‘Diode, Triode’ and INA GRM commissioned it some years ago and Richter had it premiered at the Akousma Festival in 2016, where it appeared alongside works by Bayle, Robert Hampson, and Ragnar Grippe. He’s demonstrating great confidence with the multi-channel thing, playing back pre-recorded and prepared tapes along with his recordings of instruments (e.g. a Farfisa organ and a lyre), plus there are samples, synthesised voices, and an old broken delay unit called the Publison DHM 89. Plenty of jumbled voices jabbering away here, played back at crazy speeds, and overlapping in the general blur of sonic whirlpools, until nothing is remotely intelligible. The voices are apparently samples taken from the floor of the stock exchange, and what they’re doing is rattling off strings of numbers and currency values. ‘Diode, Triode’ is intended as a critical sound-essay, the target is modern capitalism, but Richter is also saying something about the breakdown of communication; he succeeds in depicting a latterday Tower of Babel, where no-one is understood, confusion and chaos abound. He was inspired to do this by his reading of Le Parasite, a 1980 book by the French philosopher Michel Serres; Serres intended his image of the parasite as a bleak metaphor for modern society, and Richter has extended this into his own work. Intense and complex work results, almost too much audio information to process, and it’s structured to suggest a rather bleak narrative of sorts, one that ends with a “haunting piano chord” which struggles to make itself heard as it pushes back against Richter’s delay machine.
On the B side, ‘Spiral Organ Of Corti’, a title which refers to Gary Todd’s Cortical Foundation (an American label which did much to promote and present obscure avant-garde music in its imaginative reissue programme). This one is two years earlier than the INA GRM piece and, in its original form, was played back over the 47 loudspeakers in the ZKM Klangdom concert hall in Karlsruhe, a part of Germany to which our man Richter has a certain allegiance (he was raised in the Black Forest area). The method of composition here is quite similar to the A-side, using multichannel elements, instruments, samples, but also sinewaves and spring reverb for that extra dimension of metallic krangg. The voice parts this time are heavily treated, and mixed with breathing sounds, and there’s an ominous mood throughout; compared with this, the A-side seems positively vibrant with its distorted portraits of stock-market activity. We’re now in a world several years later where everything appears to have collapsed, and we must deal with alienation and isolation on a global scale. Richter points out, with justifiable pride, how he manages to weave “acoustic illusions” which “confuse the listener”, as “temporary focus glides into chaos”; such descriptions indicate how ably he manipulates his materials and uses them to build an impressive imaginary space. I can only imagine what results this would create when heard over 47 speakers, hopefully in the dark and surrounded by reptiles and pythons let loose in the auditorium.
The LP Une Fille Pétrifiée (CELLULE 75 CELL-3) is by Marc Richter under his alias Mouchoir Étanche, a name I haven’t encountered previously, though he did use it to make a one-sided 12-incher for the Dekorder label in 2020. Compared to the serious compositional ideas of Diode, Triode, this one is rather more “fun” – more samples, shorter tracks, playful manipulation of tapes, samples, and instrumentation. He points out that it mixes up “real and fake” acoustic instruments, deliberately attempting to misdirect the listening ear like a magician, and generating a mildly delirious or hallucinogenic effect. Here’s all the richness and layering I remember from those Black To Comm LPs from 15 years ago, only now a little stranger and much more assured. For one thing, he’s not afraid of telling stories or hinting at narratives, the episodic nature of each track presenting another chapter in this bizarre tale. Even the press note tells a garbled dream-like story about a visit to a house and garden, where the protagonist is beset with weird memories flooding back to him at random, and he can’t make sense of all the signs and wonders he sees around him, his very senses giving him too much information in the way of shapes, colours, and sounds. It’s this kind of fevered semi-surreal escapade Mouchoir Étanche is evoking, with an album title that sounds like a Paul Delvaux painting and cover art with a distorted cat-head (made by Photoshopping, we assume) that would have delighted the young Salvador Dali.
Both the above from 13 September 2022.