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..strotter
inst.:: live act at oblo We've said it a million times, but it bears
repeating, we love turntables, and scratchy records, and the sounds
of both, we even (especially) love the sound of both with the music
removed. Or at least most of the music removed. Fuzz and crackle and
buzz and pop and warble and whir. All the sounds people try desperately
to remove from their listening experience is exactly what we want piled
on top of ours. In fact, all the crackle and surface noise that audio
nerds discard, well, they should save it all up and bequeath it to us
to sprinkle, dollop, pour, douse all of our music with. So it was really
a no brainer that the debut cd from Strotter Inst. would be record of
the week here at AQ (as it was just a few weeks ago). Strotter is the
work of one man, Swiss turntablist / sound artist Christoph Hess, who
takes old turntables, augments them with various wires and elastic bands,
pieces of metal and all sorts of found objects, and then creates gorgeously
Spartan symphonies of rhythm and texture using just the turntable and
the stylus, no records at all. No music. The turntable becomes an instrument
capable of more than just playing other peoples' music, it is a sound
making device, an instrument as viable as any other. Although with a
truly unique palette of sounds, reminiscent of some strange minimal
electronica, albeit with a much more organic feel.This disc captures
a performance recorded live to minidisc at Oblo Cinema in Lausanne,
Switzerland, in April of 2005. And is a gloriously hypnotic soundscape
of glitchy beats, warm textural drones and strange low end strums, all
locked into hypnotic loops, that slowly shift and drift in and out of
sync as more turntables join the fray, or as the speeds of the turntables
change, or as various implements shift. The set begins with a lush drone,
difficult to imagine how it's produced, but it is warm and deep and
quite organic sounding. Soon the sound of the reverberating bands are
introduced, sounding a lot like some muted guitar, playing a simple
low end figure, the notes coming faster and faster until the whole thing
stumbles into a shambolic rhythm, a loping lurch, with occasional bursts
of needle squelch, eventually settling into a dreamy motorik groove.
The set seesaws back and forth between strange machinelike rhythms and
stretches of drone and rumble. Right toward the end there is a burst
of super distorted NOISE which slowly gives way to the final rhythmic
groove, that slowly winds down, notes drifting off until all that is
left is a single mechanical pulse. So nice.Comes packaged in a cool
cardstock sleeve with a little diecut circle perfectly above the hole
in the center of the cd. More nods to the record and its design. The
picture of Christoph Hess on the inside of the booklet looks like some
old faded textbook photo of Einstein Or Edison, hunched over his machines,
modified turntables in this case, a study of a quirky inventor, Strotter
as the sound of antiquated machinery, of objects reassigned to new tasks,
the tireless pursuit of technology recontextualization, only adding
to the whole vibe of Hess' music being some recently unearthed or discovered
scratchy, crackly sonic artifact.
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