Album: K5
Author: Massimo Ricci
Publication: Touching Extremes (source)
Date: 12/15/2014

Frank Rothkamm: Kawai K5 Digital MultiDimension Synthesizer
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To make things easier for the “unlettered know-it-all” kind of populace who might happen to stumble upon this (wannabe) civil-libertarian blog, words could be spent about additive synthesis, 1987’s Kawai K5 – the device configuring this music – representing a sort of unsuccessful experiment in that area.
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But why wasting time and energies when the overactive mind of Herr Frank Rothkamm explains all you need to cognize in regard to the above mentioned synthesis? Not only that: the most exhaustively challenging liner notes (check the label link) found in a long while put the unsuspecting addressee right inside a concatenation of distinctly exposed historical, philosophical and preternatural connections that alone surpasses the avalanches of esoteric cheap talk heard by this writer practically everywhere. Where else you will find an affiliation of the powers of Kurzweil and Synclavier machines with the concealed codes of freemasonry? Adorers of the vacuity (in all senses): fasten your seat belts and read carefully. It’s never too late to learn some new perspectives on what really shapes the cosmic laws.
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The malleability of the sounds expelled by the K5 is inarguable, and Rothkamm is well known for his skillfulness in altering predigested communicatory schemes via vintage machinery (he’s actually proficient in much everything he chooses to tackle, like the few remained individuals on the planet who do not announce themselves as “specialists” in something). No archaic instrument exists which, in the German’s sagacious hands, does not yield evolutional furtherance in relation to a percipient human willing to act as a sensitive aerial. The stunning vistas explicated by these materializations can appear as crystal-clear curves, nebulous enigmas or mere abstractions, depending on the music’s acceleration (or lack thereof) and of course on the synthetic parameters applied. One thing is for sure: not a second of this CD conducts frivolousness, and nobody can afford the luxury of describing it with sarcastic irreverence. How dare you, with titles such as “Threshold Magnitude” and “Spirit Level (For Ray Charles”)? (Just kidding, Frank). There are decades of experience and research behind this collection of momentous designs, their lambent complexity speaking for itself.
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Then again, when one reads “File Under: 5th state of matter additive synthesis”, all fits. At least for a pair of demythologizing philosophers. Perhaps Rothkamm should prepare an idiot-proof adaptation of his acute vision for the philostophers (*), too.
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(*) = From urbandictionary.com: a philostopher is “someone who attempts (often in order to impress members of the opposite sex/colleagues) to play the role of sophisticated philosopher, but instead ends up becoming lost up his/her own ass, due to being completely out of their depth”. The term was famously utilized by Frank Zappa in his epic piece “Greggery Peccary”.

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