Articles
Hatchback
Dennis Wilson
Michna Top 10

Albums
Alpha Aesar
The Alps
Anduin
Beaten By Them
Bible & Henry
Bird Show
Bitcrush
The Boats
Boduf Songs
Budd & Wright
Callers
Derek Carr
Matthew Robert Cooper
Cristal
Dreamsploitation
Gore
Hatchback
Inverz
Monika Kruse
Lights Out Asia
Miya Masaoka
Michna
Model 500
Mr Cooper
Near The Parenthesis
Patron and Patron
Procer Veneficus
Raglani
Red Snapper
Max Richter
Roots Manuva
Michael Santos
Sempervirens
Shed
Sleepingdog
Spect. Lore / Underjordiska
Andy Stott
Taub
The Third Man
Uzi & Ari
You May Die / Gifts Enola
Zèbra
Zilverhill

Compilations / Mixes
DJ /Rupture
Diaspora: Cottage Ind. 5
Total 9

EPs
John R Carlson
Intrusion
Keenhouse
Joe Lapaglia
Model 500
Duncan Ó Ceallaigh
Frank Omura
Shigeto
The Sight Below
Steinbrüchel
Van Der Papen
Warez

Steinbrüchel: Mit Ohne
12k

Though presented here in audio form only, Mit Ohne is actually a collaborative work by Ralph Steinbrüchel and Yves Netzhammer, more specifically an audio-visual installation named “The feeling of precise instability when holding things” which was presented in 2003 at the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich, Switzerland. In the display, Steinbrüchel's sound pieces were synchronized to Netzhammer's slowly mutating movements of 3D animation imagery. Even without the visual dimension (apparently a three-part projection was augmented by a multi-channel sound presentation), Steinbrüchel's seven tracks—four of them less than two minutes each—suggest a sense of movement through geographical space, a feeling further reinforced by having each of the pieces flow uninterruptedly into the next.

In the first part, the soft patter of crystalline tones initially resembles drops in a puddle before elongating into a blurry whole. A swelling surge announces the onset of part two, after which bright melodic fragments shimmer and glisten in the third. Part four is the longest of the set and, more than any of the others, its droning layers of slow-motion tones encourage reflection. As the work moves towards its close, the static-laden and insistent sixth is capped by a serene seventh. Mit Ohne's pretty drones of glistening tones and soft pitter-patter are exactly the kind of understated and polished sound sculpting one expects from 12k and, for that matter, the release wouldn't sound put of place on ROOM40 either.

October 2008