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THORSTEN SOLTAU & COMRADES - Roman Feast & a Grape from Thor Heyerdahl's Table

Format: do-MC BOX Label & Cat.Number: Geräuschmanufaktur GM#33 Release Year: 2014 Note: a collection of various works by German composer THORSTEN SOLTAU, using diverse sources from other artists such as MAX KUIPER, DEAD MAURIACS or MARINA STEWART, with nice organ-like multi-layered drones.."whipping noise layers and piercing feedback drones combined with amplified objects, to field recordings, repeating piano rhythms and hidden voice fragments to spoken word storytelling!" Spread on two MCs in big double case box with many inlays/cards, lim. 76 copies Price (incl. 19% VAT): €14.00 More Info "Roman Feast & A Grape From Thor Heyerdahl's Table features a wide collection of Thorsten Soltau's layered concrete sounds and the sources that created them. On this double-cassette album he and his "Comrades" have created a beautiful, and sometimes haunting journey through ambient drones, concrete music and cut-up sound collages. An arrangement varying from whipping noise layers and piercing feedback drones combined with amplified objects, to field recordings, repeating piano rhythms and hidden voice fragments to spoken word storytelling! An adventure in experimental music! Feat. Max Kuiper, The Dead Mauriacs, Marina Stewart, Mihkel Kleis, Rainier Lericolais, Gildas Brugaro, Fluorescent Grey and Susan Matthews Two high-bias chrome cassettes in special vinyl packaging. Comes with one hand-numbered and signed art print out of the four motifes: The Center, Poor Man’s Deathbed, Bring Me A Head Full Of Thoughts or the Red Killer." [label info] "For whatever odd reason I was thinking that Thorsten Soltau was one of the guys from the old cassette network, but in fact he started to play music in 2009 and on discogs it says about his work that he works "exclusively with concrete material, plundered data carriers and vinyl sources and leaves his first proper use of digital manipulation behind. Influenced by first electronic music and the avant-garde cut-up of musical and non-musical sources Thorsten Soltau decided to teach himself a form and musical language of strange, two-dimensional musique concrete and jarring rhythms." He works with other people a lot, I think, as this excellently designed double tape proofs. The comrades are people like Max Kuiper, Marina Stewart, Mihkel Kleis, The Dead Mauriacs, Roman Feast (all on the first tape, sometimes with more comrades per track), while Kuiper and Kleis return on the other tape along with Gildas Brugaro, Susan Matthews and Fluorescent Grey and Rainier Lericolais provide a remix. A vivid little scene, as The Dead Mauriacs also release on this label. In the first four piece, all on cassette one, I must admit I heard some great music but hardly something that translated to concrete material, plundered data carriers and vinyl sources, but rather something that sounded like ambient inspired synthesizer work, despite whoever was collaborating. These pieces were all quite dark, quite heavily layered with synthesizer like sounds and didn't sound surprisingly new, but they did sound surprisingly good. Music that fits the dreary grey day, ending with a boom and a clap in the Lericolais remix. On the other tape we find more what discogs (at least) promises: plundered sound sources, vinyl work and such like. First through a live recording (Soltau/Kuiper/Brugaro/Matthews) which opens with the crackling of vinyl and ends with noise and we move in between through these ends. Thereafter is a piece by the first three but with the addition of Kleis and it's quite a lovely piano sample being repeated over and over, but shifting back and forth, going the all out of phase way from Steve Reich and slowly morphing into a marimba or glockenspiel. He would be proud of the simple yet highly effective piece of music. The Fluorescent Grey remix doesn't much add to this beauty, it just makes it a bit noisier. 'Plagot 2' is a nice faint technoid like piece, but also seems a bit superflouos. Otherwise: excellent release." [FdW/Vital Weekly]