Stealth. The three tracks here – they don’t feel as much like compositions as random improvisations, clattering percussion with occasional intrusions – are quiet, discreet, and take the listener by stealth. In existence for some 20 years, the four-piece collective that is Polwechsel have striven to challenge the boundaries between genre classifications, theory and practice, and the divide between composition and improvisation. ‘Untitled (No 7)’ renders all of this quite apparent, and it is, indeed, challenging, from both a critical perspective, and a more accommodating listening position, also.
The second of the three tracks, ‘UNY’ – subtly builds a tense atmosphere with low drones and long, metallic scrapes of feedback. The final track, ‘UNX’ is an immense 17 minutes in duration, and incorporates the elements of the previous two, the rattling percussion, which sounds for all the world like pots and pans being hit with wooden spoons, and jam jars and a host of miscellaneous items being tinkled and thumped at random, increases in velocity and tempo until it plateaus as a frenzy of clattering noise while scrapes and shards of feedback strain together to forge an unholy cacophony.
|
More interesting from a theoretical and performative perspective than in terms of being an album you’d actually want to listen to, it nevertheless has its merits.
Polwechsel Online
|
