Album: ALT
Author: maeror3
Publication: maeror3 (source)
Date: 12/29/2009

"He Rodkamm, but friends call him Frank Rodkamm" - so is his new "family member" label «Baskaru», offering the audience a look at this album in particular and multifaceted creativity of the German composer in general. Rodkamm began its activities in the early eighties, have embraced "a cluster network" with its strange but many film talents of manipulation and "collage" music, then fell silent for a while to return again in the nineties, creating new material and removing records from the store in the past years. Disk «Alt», blend tracks recorded over the last decade, should please fans of ambient music in his minimalist and experimental forms of existence. The first part of the album is almost entirely devoted to the manipulation of Frank with short and very "standard" samples, extracted from libraries is not the newest and most clever "synthesizers. By launching them in a circle, a musician in every way transforms their sound over and over again (slowly turning the equipment), making it louder, then quieter, then pulling, then accelerating, muffling and changing the equalizer settings. On the track «GUI» on the same principle is changing very beautiful piece of guitar improvisation (something blues heard in her, at least at first), against which the echo of the sweep of the molecule, separated from her the same, and other "digital garbage" . The structure of the album changes from the beginning of «RED», the author brings together in one song many seemingly unrelated sounds and begins to build one sequence, during which quickly picks up and carries with him, plunging into the depths of vibration, pulsation, resonance, entangling stratagem of an infinite set of elements (among them can even hear the characteristic «Kraftwerk» cold "machine" of consonance). Examining the curves of the amplitudes in the «SUN» and reaching the full minimum in «LOW», since «MID» Rodkamm brings everyone in the world is warm and still, like a summer night, ambient, transparent, vibrating in the air, spreading a uniform flow in infinite space . Through it sometimes penetrate the signals properly operating equipment, the echo of voices and church chorales ( «OOO»), creating a very unusual atmosphere. The last two pieces of the album - another excerpt from the popular sound libraries, work with sounds that someone just not used to create electronic music, from trance and Hausa to the usual "pop". Their smooth glide up and down, their synthetic harmony pleasing to the ear and only - but, in our time and many are willing to accept as a boon. Press release label calls it all «Ambient Enigmatica» and argues that Rodkamm cultivates mystery. Perhaps they do not exaggerate, these lucky few, to catch in its catalog this wonderful album, claiming to love many listeners.

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