Nothing like a large-scale “gas tank” installation sound-art piece to make a bracing start to the weekend. Our German friend Emerge has done just this on Raumforderung (ATTENUATION CIRCUIT ACU 1077), attracted by the “extraordinary acoustics” of the 80-metre tank in Augsburg which, in 2024, was 70 years old; the artist seems to have perceived this as some form of “anniversary” worth celebrating.
The word raumforderung has a double meaning; one of them is “a demand for space”, which says something about the merciless imperatives of Western industry and its insatiable demands for energy; we need gas, and we need somewhere large to keep all the gas. Emerge makes no comment on current crises emerging from our 21st-century demands for cloud computing and data centres, but perhaps the implication is clear. The other meaning is a medical term and may be connected to cancers or tumours, an unpleasant association which however is entirely fitting to the brooding, intense nature of this incessant sound. Indeed the press release suggests we file the record under “Dark Ambient”.
While the second cut is rather ordinary “booming metal echoes” of a sort which any self-respecting industrial listener would regard as yesterday’s fish, the first track has a grim and grinding quality that is very compelling – suggestive of no escape from our modern self-made Hell, as unseen forces wrap around us like evil antibodies. Emerge, as the world knows, is Sascha Stadlmeier and the owner of this very distinctive label with its own ideas and identity about the place of experimental electronics in the world. (25/09/2024)