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ARTiST....: lithops
TiTLE.....: queries
LABEL.....: Sonig
GENRE.....: electronic
SOURCE....: cdda
QUALiTY...: VBR / joint-stereo
SiZE......: 83,6 MB
REL.DATE..: 06-02-2006
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01] kahn 09:21
02] wackler 05:54
03] moggast 03:18
04] lboi 03:44
05] sequenced twinset 06:32
06] tubino see-through 05:15
07] tensdon 03:26
08] filterabend 03:34
09] swingern in flingern 04:21
10] blasmusik 06:11
11] fi intro 06:29
12] fi 04:26
TOTAL TiME : 62:31 min
Listening to Queries in the context of the rest of
producer Jan St. Werner's releases (most notably
as one half, then one-third of latter-day
Kraftwerk bedfellows Mouse on Mars), is probably
more interesting than listening to it at face
value. Much of this album was (presumably) worked
out at the same time as 1998's Autoditacker, Mouse
on Mars' most stunning release. Half of the 12
songs here were released before 1999 was over, and
the rest were produced around the same time.
St. Werner isn't interested in hiding the fact
that Mouse on Mars and his Lithops project share
similar origins. Many of the textures, effects
schemes, and sequencing habits spring from the
same circuitry as Lithops' more-famous
half-brother (for a fast reference point, hear the
quick chill-out-room-tinged "Tenson"). But there's
also no question that this isn't a record of Mouse
on Mars outtakes. The mood is drastically
different from that of the rollicking and
infectious Autoditacker. Here, St. Werner takes
his time in warming up and wastes no time in
trying to impress. The slow starter "Kahn," like
much of the other material on Queries, is almost
completely devoid of a rhythm section. This makes
it hard to feel any song-ish progression;
attention to harmony is strikingly subtle, and
only when abstract texture is completely stripped
away as in "Sequenced Twinset" do you really get a
feel for how much is going on pitch-wise. It's
still not going to hit you over the head musically
(chords remain almost unheard), but these
less-crowded moments on an already spare record
help to focus your attention on tonality. And
that's a running theme - while Autoditacker was
decidedly playful throughout, many songs on
Queries are framed with a certain amount of buffer
material before and after the real meat. This
serves to familiarize the listener with what's
going to happen before it actually does, and then
to concentrate on what has happened after it's
done. While it's clear that these drawn-out intros
and outros serve a purpose, they also could be
construed as filler.
Aside from a few dabblings in live and relatively
unprocessed drumming, Queries feels unashamedly
synthetic. If St. Werner is basking in the glow of
anything at all, it's in the dim 20-watt bulb of a
pristinely-tuned and bass-heavy studio filled with
the slow-moving architecture of his customized
electronic instruments of choice.
It is tempting to think that St. Werner is pulling
much of this material from the bottom of his hard
drive to give it some air and earn a few euros for
Sonig, but it's hard to picture Queries thriving
in its original production year of 1998, the same
year that much of its potential audience was being
blissed out and commandeered by Boards of Canada's
landmark Music has the Right to Children (hear
"Blasmusik" and "Fi" for espeically close
comparisons), where "filler" was used to
magnificent and almost poppy effect. Now that the
IDM (or, as the Germans like to call it,
"post-techno") crowd has settled down a little bit
and may even find itself a little jaded with the
direction of a music that has splintered into a
thousand sub-genres, they may find themselves at a
very happy point with Queries.
Buy me if you love me :)