byetone - death of a typographer

on the turntable:

byetone
death of a typographer
raster-noton / r-n092

image:japanese forms

Back again following a rather long hiatus, due to me relocating (again), one2zero will be trying hard to make up for lost time with some posts on a more regular basis. First up is the excellent release from Byetone -Death of A Typographer. Also, thanks to my good friend Chris for letting me discover a whole host of exciting new sounds over the past few months. (one2zero)

buy: raster-noton

website: raster-noton


,death of a typographer’ is meant to be a snap shot. the release was recorded in a winter week in berlin. only the pre-released single ,plastic star’ was created in sunny athens. the album contains the original session version of ,plastic star’.

the music of ,death of a typographer’ carries the special sound of raster-noton - but it is different: the tracks act as focal points, as elegy of an latently flowing stream, a stream that still moves on even when the music has long faded away. the tracks do not necessarily move forward, they rather open up a dark abyss which seems deepest in ,capture this I’ and II. byetone manages to achieve a remarkable metamorphosis of the organic, the tracks don't reveal any of the elements of conventional composition techniques but somehow they seem to show through the static sound body. with ,heart’ byetone finishes the album in a very dark manner. isn't there any hope? not in berlin winter.

,death of a typographer’ poses us riddles, even the title reminds of peter greenaway's ,the draughsman's contract’. for the vigilant spectator the ambiguous artwork will reveal the ,death of a typographer’. (© raster-noton)

signal - robotron

on the turntable:

signal
robotron
r-n069



raster-noton's flagship signal - olaf bender, frank bretschneider and carsten nicolai - is something like the reference group of one of the pivotal labels of new minimal electronic music. but although only having released one cd so far, their sessions and concerts have been very influential until today. some of those tracks of the past years now result in a compilation that joins the work of the three masterminds of raster-noton, but not like a simple aggregation of egos, much rather like a conversation in which every discourse modulates the other and in the end it is not possible anymore to distinguish between each individual contribution. in this sense, signal would be a superego that serves a process in which the rule, coincidence and interaction play equal parts. this blends into an open and democratic music that has some of kraftwerk’s melancholy in it. thus, signal are their spiritual heirs. (© raster-noton)

buy: raster-noton

website: raster-noton