Album: FB03
Author: SEAN 0 & MARINA A
Publication: ORGAN (source)
Date: 02/24/2008

FB03 is apparently the final installment of the FB trilogy, first thing we’ve heard so we can’t really comment on the evolution here – seems this culminating work in an “epic of supermodern electronic music” and Rothkamm's “radical Critique of the Stereophonic Illusion results in microscopic-level detail and a most intimate sound. Monophonic sound sources, coupled like DNA strands, are the building blocks. Binary rhythms, now at the forefront, result in frequency distributions closest to folk music. FB03 shows aspects of multiple time periods simultaneously as it architects the Great Evolution: from tiny granulations to dense drones”.- Well that’s the science bit out of the way (got that bit from the blurb that came with this fine album).

Thing is, considering all the highbrow Wire reader chin stroking seriousness presented here, this album is actually fun – this album has humanity, it has substance, it has depth and yes, deep art if you want to go deep, but it is in reality lots of enjoyable minimal soothing ambient bleep-blimp-buzz-drone pleasure - clean cut circuit-bending of both existing technology and of reality.

German born, now American based, Rothkamm, aka Frank Holger, does indeed create something that you could describe (and enjoy) quite rightly as supermodern electronic music – crisp, clean, minimal, modern, rewarding instrumental (simple?) electronic music. He asserts that the three principles of supermodernism are: "1. Be Utopian and Scientific, 2. Nod to the First Pioneers, 3. Make full use of Left, Right, and Phantom Channel".

And yes it does nod towards the pioneers like Stockhausen and yes we could analyse it and get all geeky art-house Wire-serious on your arse, we’re not going to though – this is just music - enjoyable resonant sound-art music, the simple (complex) pleasure of creating and/or listening, this is everything you want music to be – a find enjoyable piece of art.



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