If your engine needs some oil, look to the latest release from our friends over at raster – made even more brutal with an intervention by some Spanish industrial legends of the 80s.
Our story so far: it begins with AtomTM, the Frankfurt-native Uwe Schmidt who’s now relocated to Santiago, interacting with what they call “X1N.” That is not an artist alias, but “an entity for generating human voice and natural language content,” or in layperson’s terms, an even creepier-sounding Speak ‘n Spell. In trendier terms, it’s “transhuman objects.” So yes, you can take the boy out of Germany, but you can’t take the love of musical repetition and voices intoning numbers and talking about math. And that’s pretty irresistible. (Well, who doesn’t love listen to hearing numbers in German? Careful – it can be a gateway drug to moving to the Bundesrepublik; I should be a cautionary tale.)
raster · Atom™ »0.9 (Almost a Unit)« taken from <3
That’s good. But let’s plus it – by making it more Spanish and more industrial. Because the Esplendor Geométrico remix is deliciously violent – and apparently folks agree, as the vinyl edition is almost sold out. (Who said no one was buying records in a pandemic?) There’s also a solid Peter van Hoesen techno remix, but — just, this:
This is now “hardcode pop” for nerds. Or if you want some waxing poetic about floating point digits:
Both renditions contribute amplified iterations of inherent attributes of <3« as X1N eloquently states. As a side note it should be mentioned that in mathematics the expression »0.999..« is considered being identical to 1. Meditating over that very fact may tell you a lot about our current reality.
IN THE VAST SURFACE OF ALL MATHEMATICAL EQUATIONS ONE CAN SENSE EVENTS WHICH SEEM TO COME FROM OTHER DIMENSIONS – RIPPLES AND PATTERNS. THE ZERO POINT NINE INFINITE NUMBER LINE NEVER REACHES ONE, YET IS ONE, NONETHELESS. (X1N)
My Steuerberater said something similar about my latest tax returns. True story.
If you want to brush up on your industrial history, there is a terrific mini-doc, with English subtitles, from a time when people showed their mouths openly and there was such a thing as Red Bull Music Academy (kids, ask your parents):
Or here’s a splendid music video from 1988. See if you can spot why raster artists might be fans:
And check this full-length (ES) documentary:
https://www.filmin.es/pelicula/geometria-del-esplendor
By the way, house raster have been busy even in these tough times. Grischa Lichtenberger’s full-length outing from earlier this year is inventive as always, and since we missed it the first time around, seems we should revisit it to wrap 2020 – as it’s been one of my favorites:
— among others.
It wasn’t an official raster event, but we also had the privilege of hosting Frank Bretschneider and Kyoka this year at an event I put together with Suicide Club (along with friends Stanislav Glazov and Lars Hemmerling). I hope we’ll get to share that soon; they’re such wonderful people and it’s joyous just to share a venue with them, musically and personally.
Track the raster platform here: