Dark Chocolate from Germany, Rendered in Floor-Rattling Soun
Robespierre | New York | 10/30/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Contrary to the above editorial review, this release by Reinhard Voigt only resembles his brother's work superficially. The major similarity is this: endless loops in a minimalist house style. But within that genre, Reinhard's output aims for the chest and doesn't let up. It is far less arch and ethereal than the music of his brother, Wolfgang Voigt.
The latter has spoken of his project, Gas, as a pop synthesis of influences that are specifically German. Gas albums like Zauberberg, Königsforst and Pop are perfect in their way -- beautiful and evocative -- but are also nebulous and discorporate. Even Wolfgang's lesser-known series, M:I:5, is an intellectual exercise in drifting tempi -- the House equivalent of La Monte Young or early Steve Reich. With his first Sturm album, Reinhard might have begun in Wolfgang's vein, but subsequent efforts have favored the visceral, the driving and the deep.
Sturmgesten is Reinhard Voigt's second album under the pseudonym, Sturm, and it is a dark mouthful in the most satisfying sense. Divided into eight cuts, it consists entirely of loops of low oscillating tones. Appropriately, the album cover deifies a piece of dark chocolate suffused with low-key alchemical light. Listening to the album feels as if you're chewing successive pieces of that metaphysical dark chocolate.
Sturmgesten might be a one-note release -- literally -- but it slakes your thirst for low tones like nothing else. If you live in a bustling city and want to mask those annoying bass-lines coming from the apartment above yours, this release is tailor-made for that purpose. It is not music so much as a carefully made noise machine for people whose taste in relaxing sound is darker and more driven than the twitter of birds or washes of cheesy sparkling synths. Sturmgesten reassures the morbid listener that, yes, hibernation is a dark pneumatic activity and occurs during an emotional eclipse.
Yeats once wrote that, in his verses, he tried to capture a feeling he called "the cold emotion." Sturmgesten seems beyond any feeling at all but that of lying near a pulsing, vibrating machine: perfect for those (like me!) who are lulled to sleep by images of ice floes, deserted caves, bleak urban landscapes and deserted factories. Sturmgesten feels like that: A purgatorial factory in which the only thing moving is that chocolate-black device in the corner pumping relentlessly.
"Perfect, isn't it?" I asked my girlfriend at the time of Sturmgesten's release.
"Yes, perfect," she said. "Keep looping it. Loop it more.""
Track Listings (8) - Disc #1