If listening to something that sounds like the earliest pixel-based console games for five minutes is your thing, then you’re gonna love the opening piece on ‘/ Bregman / Deutsch / Hecker / Höller’. Similarly, if you’re a fan of Mark Fell’s previous work, then this qualifies as an essential release. Yes, Florian Hecker’s back again, this time in collaboration with Carsten Höller, with another instalment in his explorations in electronica on a microcosmic scale.
The press release sheds some light on the title, which “indicates the percental inputs of the eight pieces, intertwines practical, theoretical, and conceptual proportions and its audible dramatizations.” It also helps by giving some detail about the concept and the mathematics behind it, with 6/8 of the pieces untitled, 2/8 titled, and “8/8 of the record playing on 45 RPM.” Yes, it’s neatly pressed onto a pair of 10” pieces of wax.
Gated electronic blips or similar but subtly varying speed and frequency are a recurring theme across 6/8 of the tracks, although there are other sections that take the principles of the most primitive of chip-tunes to create noodlesome, doodlesome 8-bit melodies that provide some break from the endless plinking and pinging.
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Of the titled tracks, ‘Updown’ (Side C1) consists of a sampled female voice speaking the phrase ‘UpDown’ on a loop – for five whole minutes. The trick’s repeated on ‘Gelbgrün’ on side D1, which sounds like the same sample but reversed. The untitled track on side C2 features a single chord battered relentlessly at the same tempo for a similar duration. With only slight tonal variation to listen out for.
It’s audacious and on paper, at least, amusing, and as an exercise in digital minimalism, but the reality is that ‘/ Bregman / Deutsch / Hecker / Höller’ is a musical work that’s likely to drive even the most balanced person mental. It’s not Hecker’s best work (for my money, both ‘Speculative Solution’ and the collaboration with Russell Haswell, ‘Kanal Gendyn’ are a lot more interesting, if not necessarily more accessible) and probably best only taken in small doses.
Florian Hecker Online
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