Album: just 3 organs
Author: Michele Viali
Publication: Darkroom (source)
Date: 04/26/2008

Frank Rothkamm is a tireless investigator and composer of German origin moved first to Canada and then in the United States, where he lives and works now for a long time.

His "Just 3 Organs" is an album made - as the title - with only three organs of the model Yamaha Electone 205D: Frank fascinated this instrument since childhood and now found only his personal accomplishment with this work outside the highly schemes, far from what we could expect to hear talk about an instrument that usually is used for its sound solemn and majestic.

The album transcends in a dimension electronic / minimal by the strong taste 70s: often have the impression of listening to ancient keyboards, but in reality is always and only the organ the absolute protagonist of the work. The whole work was composed between 2003 and 2008 using three organs amplified and played utopian in sync with a triangular position which guarantees a reverb effect.

The nine tracks have titles ironic generally refer to recent history and American society, supported by images contained in the explanatory booklet. Without doubt we are before a magnetic disk such as excessive in its yield audio out of every predictability. Listening is not the simplest, as the classical instrument in question arrives to develop sounds that could be combined to noise, although this is impossible already imagining the tone resulted pressing a button on the organ.

Among the most shocking moments are "B And B Plus 33", a very dark theme based on a (I assume!) Beat amounting when any piece dark ambient, "Younger Critics Of New York", lasting just 40 seconds, consists of a network of iron and crazy notes that increases in intensity until extinction, "California Pink-A-Pades", which seems to mimic the sounds of vintage 70s fake electronic brains, and finally "Half Man , Half Amazing, "a collection of small fragments that occasionally find the way of melody and then losing it.

"Just 3 Organs" is a work of pure experimentation carried out by an organist improvised showing, however, have clear ideas on the result to be achieved. For the limits of madness stained by a touch of genius!

Michele Viali

(translated from the Italian)

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