Album: LAX
Author: Dmitry Vasilyev
Publication: monochrome vision (source)
Date: 05/03/2007

Another turn in the long time history of Frank Rothkamm's work. Some time ago, I released the compilation of archive recordings "Moers Works" which is considered as one of the best experiments with the home-made/household machinery.

As the opposite, "LAX" was just recorded in 2007, but showing again the great potential of the vintage gear, for example the sinewave generator (the first one ever manufactured) or the old-fashioned personal computers Atari and Apple Machintosh. These last ones, as you know, were popular in the 80s, but now they got the new attention by the people who are falling into nostalgia with all these old computer games and 8-bit music arrangements.

Rothkamm is going another way. His approach is far away from retro-aesthetics, his music sounds pretty much different, he uses these facilities with different purpose. Seems that he want to increase the distance from the past, regardless of what you can keep in memory or what you can't even be aware of. Rothkamm says that his aim is to figure out the existence of another, parallel reality - and there is no doubting, he succeeds.

This album creates quite unsettled atmosphere, the musical language seems to be absolutely alienated, but the intensity of its constructions is exceptionally high. I still wonder if it's possible to label it as "extreme", because in fact it's not so atonal or noisy as many other provocational recordings from the underground. Maybe the point is rooted in subliminal xenophobia, induced by these somehow inhuman soundstreams. There is also a strange story behind this album, Rothkamm says that almost all hardware was destroyed by fire right after the album was completed. But well, after all - "LAX" is the nice surprise for all of you hunters of unusual sounds.

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