Published by Alessandro Violante on December 29, 2018
A journey into dark and complex electronic music. A succession of kaleidoscopic and various, slower or faster, convulsed rhythms attacking the listener’s ear, interrupted by dense and relatively softer atmospheric moments, and sometimes by few melodic elements.
Telematic, Totakeke‘s new album, has an old school minimalistic approach to rhythmic noise music, without sounding outdated.
Four years after the release of Me.tem.psy.cho.sys by German label HANDS, the musician builds an hour-long energetic experience for the listener and genre’s aficionado. The eight long songs composing Telematic are strictly linked with each other, as if they were all part of the same music stream.
Heavy distortions, metallurgic beats, noise injections and, why not, a bit of melody, are the ingredients of the album. But to sell it short wouldn’t make justice to the complexity of these songs, each of them having a different soul.
A physical, straight to the point, approach is manifest since the opener Phase tilt. At the beginning there are interferences, then beats come, syncopated, becoming faster and faster, reaching its climax before an atmospheric pause comes, preceding the following, heavier, titletrack.
There’s a juxtaposition of layers the listener will find also in the following songs. Asphalt has more of an electro sound and an engaging rhythm. Then the tempo slows down for a while, with two more reasoned songs: Sideband and Z_FDB.
Operator is a frenzy, syncopated-broken beat episode, an unstoppable monster immersed into an atmospheric landscape. But the best comes with the unexpected, harsh and stabbing noise stream of the long Con-tu-sion, which causes a deep, annihilating, sonic wound for the listener, breaking the beat-driven wall.
Con-tu-sion alternates different sounds and passages, from IDM to noise to ambient, preceding the last, long song, Moth to a flame. The long, syncopated, dark pounding beat is welcomed by noise sounds, which prepare the final climax, reaching the goal of the track. The exhausted listener has been overwhelmed by plenty of distorted rhythms, sounds and noises.
Frank Mokros is the one guilty of this sonic crime against the listener which, as if it was possessed by Stockholm syndrome, will like this assault and will play it again. How could you blame him?
Rating: 7, 5
Label: HANDS