Frank Bretschneider - EXP [Raster-Noton - 2010]“Exp” finds this long term electronica minimalist and Raster-Noton label /collective founder offer up a double disc audio/ visual set that compacts & condenses the label distinct and clinical sound into smaller & often jarring sonic bites. With the album going from stripped static built beat scapes, onto retro synth and electro washers, through to more noisy and complex beat/ electro texture scapes, onto sleek electro funk elctroinca work-outs and beyound.. The audio disc part of the package is divided into 35 individual tracks, which range between 13 seconds and nearly 3 minutes a piece. Though-out theses 35 tracks Bretschneider jumps, darts and shifts all over the place from: complex yet stripped beat bound constructions, onto electro textured grain 'n' spliced feedback dwells, into more harmonic yet sparse ambient simmers, through to funk based minimal techno work-outs. As you’d imagine with the many of the tracks been quite short- the ideas, textures and structures don’t hang around very long, so through the albums run time is not much over the forty minute mark Bretschneider stuffs in so many moods, vibes and shades into a very small space, making this is very, very replayble.
The visual disc part of the set offers up 18 minutes of sparsely coloured ,but often highly complex textural and patterned based animations which contract, shift, exploded and morph in time with a selection of music from the audio disc. As you can imagine this is often quite very head screwing in it’s audio/visual assault your as head tries to cope with both Bretschneider often highly complex electronics and their visual representation. The two discs come in your typical Raster-Noto striped and sleek packaging with a six-sided white card folder featuring just black and yellow colours, a brief write-up from Bretschneider about EXP aims, and a few stills from the visual part of the disc. All told “Exp” is a highly worthwhile, often brain frying Audio/ visual expedition into Rasta- Noton distinct universe Roger Batty
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