Artist : Iso68
Title : Space Frames
Genre : Electronic / Lo-Fi
Year : 2008
Date : 09/2008
Bitrate : VBR kbps
Tracks : 08
Label : Pingipung 15
Source : CDDA
Encoder : Lame 3.97
Length : 40:13 min
Size : 57,3 MB
Tracklist:
----------
01.parabol 05:17
02.strange strum 03:31
03.forestrain 05:38
04.noops 04:49
05.snaut 06:49
06.autistic insect 02:54
07.plano piloto 05:48
08.the great punster 05:27
-------
40:13 min
From the beginning the members of the duo
iso68 have concerned themselves with
combining acoustic and electronic sound
material, and since 1999 they have played an
active part in the German Electronica scene.
Apart from their collaborative albums, Florian
Zimmer and Thomas Leboeg have been
working together with (among others) Christof
Kurzmann, Calexico and trio sonar.
"Space Frames" is the third album by iso68,
after "Mizoknek" (2001, Hausmusik) and
"Here There" (2003, Hausmusik).
After almost four years in the making, the
album ranges between Jazz influences, Pop
fragments and tracky Electronica.
The collaboration with various guest
musicians, among them Andreas Haberl (The
Notwist, Masha Qrella, etc.), Johannes Huth,
and Carsten Netz, is a substantial element of
Space Frames.
Thomas Leboeg is a member of Hamburg's
pop band Kante; Florian Zimmer also plays in
the bands Saroos and Jersey.
Jazz, dear followers of independent pop music,
is not a competitive sport.
It's a feeling - like in Mr. Fingers' acidiferous
classic, "House is a feeling".
And somewhere between the melting polar
caps of Jazz and House, between the principles
of division of labour and of sound studies driven
by machine-made rhythm, the iso68 duo too arrive
at an archaic modernism that is all their own -
made up of electrically charged Hohner clavinets,
radiophonic workshops with David Tudor,
and a bag of fermented grass, to be smoked
preferably with Augustus Pablo's excursions on
the melodica. What time is it?
It's pretty late, but iso68 are not about vague
indietronic swirling, they're about positioning
their wibbly-wobbly sound paintings quite
deliberately near the places of longing of
musical culture. Near Sun Ra's grand keyboard
improvisations, like in the holiday song "the great
punster", near the strange duos on the British
electronic label Warp and their bunker-line
studios in the sand, in the same song. iso68
create melodies that you can pick out from hundreds
of music pieces, that are carried our way through the
ether, that waft across the plashing waves of a lake,
or that say hello! to us straight from a manhole
cover next to the autobahn, like a ghoul.
Is that a combo jamming, or is the ensemble being
bolted together by a top engineer at a mixing board?
I can't tell, but the incredibly long drawn-out notes
send shivers down my spine, and I mistake
the iso68 track "plano piloto" for the main theme of
an old French soundtrack by - what's his name again?
- and that's a good sign.
With iso68, the beats are always in the front, but
not for a single moment you become aware of it.
Or else, such as in the cooled-down ice machine
crusher "Forestrain", they evolve into a smouldering
atmosphere-roller: no escape, I assure you.
Everything here is dense, at the same time diaphanous,
friendly, focused and yet incomparably relaxed.
Jazz!
It's amazing how there are only two permanent
members to iso68, but on their new and fourth
album "Space Frames", Thomas Leboeg and
Florian Zimmer put so much feeling (there it is again!)
into the details of sounds that you could just as well
call them a collective.
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