Conrad Schnitzler & Bjorn Hatterud, “Hirschgebrull”

Everywhere one looks these days it seems that yet another “krauty” band releases an album or another collection of krautrock material is introduced, after existing outside of the minds of many musicians and fans for decades.  While many fans are now discovering the repetition and creativity of an artform geared toward universal communication, electronic music pioneer Conrad Schnitzler (Tangerine Dream, Kluster, Eruption) is moving toward the future, entering a series of disjointed collaborations with Norwegian Noise Orchestra performer and critic, Bjorn Hatterud.

The duo seem quite pleased to promote the release as a set of remixes of their “garbage,” mailing pieces to each other that they did not like or somehow dissatisfied them.  Hirschgebrull progresses in a fittingly disjointed manner, utilizing spacey or minimal pieces to offset surprisingly intense entries that are randomly scattered throughout the release.

Muted industrial beats and heavily modulated synthetic noise, pitch shifting, blips, and synthetic feedback open the album.  Each piece appears to be its own contained creation, until two exceptional, dark entries pierce the minimal landscape and immediately lend the album a sense of cohesion and progression.

Part 5 shatters the preceding beats, blips, and synthetic noise with an extended drone, utilizing effects that emulate a distant, heavily phased guitar, rotating between two notes.  Ethereal feedback surrounds the track, providing a type of resonance otherwise absent from the release to that point.  Afterward, some spacier, drone-oriented pieces further contrast the synthetic opening of the album.

Preceding a scattered, dreamy finale, Part 9 echoes Part 5 with significantly darker timbre than the other pieces on the disc, as a filtered, distorted key progression underlies minimal percussion and droning swells.  This piece thoroughly summarizes the entirety of the release with its combination of industrial and ethereal elements.  For a collection of unwanted tracks, Hirschgebrull is a rather thought-provoking and forward-looking release.

Fysisk Format / Synesthetic Recordings

7/10

Tags: Bjorn Hatterud, Conrad Schnitzler, Eruption, Fysisk Format, Kluster, Norwegian Noise Orchestra, Synesthetic Recordings, Tangerine Dream

This entry was posted on May 2, 2011 at 11:32 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.