Published by Alessandro Violante on May 19, 2018
A war machine. That’s Mono No Aware: Leif Künzel‘s rhythmic noise project, one of the most important of HANDS label, that now releases with Oto its sixth studio album in eighteen years. Behind the deluge of blazing rhythms, as often happens in the genre, there’s a deeper meaning that the listener can’t easily imagine. Mono No Aware, in Japanese, means something similar to pathos or to “perception of things”.
The artist often used Japanese language to name its works, demonstrating the interest that Künzel has for this culture. In Japanese, Oto means sound, and in fact the artist focuses on it and on its manipulation and distortion. Mono No Aware has composed sixteen songs perfect for its energetic and powerful live performances, with some calmer exceptions, and in fact the live performance is the perfect dimension for his music: here he unleashes all his power with his overpowering grooves that make everyone dance.
The overlapping of sound and noise layers is a trademark of Mono No Aware, a practice that emerges especially when he plays live. Behind apparent minimal rhythms, there are several of them, which enrich its music. There’s a perfect alchemy between each song at play. Some of them are slower and granitic, some others are faster, syncopated and trenchant, some leave the listener breathe. Among the faster episodes, Where the deep grass grows, F12, Transient life and Minikuininatta are live killers. Where the deep grass grows uses a technique used in the past by Imminent Starvation and Winterkalte: at the end of the song the distorted beat highlights the “nude” rhythm upon which the distorted layer was put. Its aim is to reveal to the listener how things were made. The slower episodes recall Winterkälte as well as pioneers Esplendor Geométrico, although with some differences. Since his early days, Künzel has always had a personal approach to this music.
72 is a particularly trenchant techno-industrial enriched by a noise layer in the background, and it’s surely one of the best moments of the album. There are less cacophonic moments, closer to pure electronic music, such as with Philipp Münch remix of Furafurafura and Red devils with blue eyes. While Münch’ remix breaks Künzel’ assault thanks a a rhythm which pays some kind of tribute to ‘90s music, the second mention has a melodic element. Kaki recalls early industrial music by means of 70s metal percussions, while the ending song Ubergang is a good outro which seems a field recordings experiment.
Oto is nothing more but the classic Mono No Aware album, a good starting point for everyone new to its music, a front assault pervaded by heavy noise injections, syncopated rhythms and technoid drums, while also having different kind of songs which break the tension of the album. An album which goes straight to the point.
Label: HANDS
Rating: 8