Wow, Berlin’s Karaoke Kalk label has been on a roll recently: I really enjoyed the diverse approaches to beats used by Static and J.R. Plankton, and now I’m impressed by the new Tolouse Low Trax album, which I find much more interesting than its predecessor, “Mask Talk”. Here, the man behind this solo project, Detlef Weinrich from Düsseldorf, member of industrial mainstays Kreidler, bombards the listener with an intricate array of percussive patterns confronting playful arpeggios. Repeated again and again, those polyrhythmic patterns converge to transporting effect. Call it ‘hypnotic’ if you must, but strangely Weinrich’s drum computers also ooze funky industrial minimalism, rendering the album too intense for background café listening. The Kreidler man clearly knows his Cluster catalogue and he uses it in a good way. “Sussing” and “Conpearl Walker” are recommended places to start exploring this album. Or “Barka”, with its atypical bass pulse and Carpenteresque synth stabs. The former two are wordless, but while “Jeidem Fall” would be very enjoyable as an instrumental album as well (or maybe even more), it’s nice to hear how the vocals are fluttering in the bouncing breeze, as if somebody had hung them up to dry.
If it weren’t for those vocals, “Jeidem Fall” – in a modernist move the ‘i’ is inserted to destroy denotative meaning – would sit well in the recent Raster Noton catalogue. But why the comparisons? Let’s just call this a benchmark album for Karaoke Kalk. The vinyl version contains two tracks less than the cd, but it comes with a download code for the entire thing.
