Elektro Guzzi & Cristian Vogel: Co-Exist EP
Endless Process

For whatever reason, it took seven years for this collaborative release to make its way into the world, but it hardly sounds dated; if anything, it sounds so vital it conceivably could have been created weeks ago. The background story's simple enough: when electronic sound sculptor Cristian Vogel and ‘live techno trio' Elektro Guzzi (guitarist Bernhard Hammer, bassist Jakob Schneidewind, and drummer Bernhard Breuer) met in 2013 to perform together at the 'fmRiesemusic festival' in Wattens, Austria, they spent three days rehearsing and recording, the documented evidence of which remained archived until now.

The twenty-two-minute digital EP presents four tracks, all of them collaborations in the truest sense for blurring the lines between the contributors. Even if at one moment a Vogel detail seems to jump to the forefront and one by Elektro Guzzi elsewhere, for the most part the material doesn't break down into parts that can be easily affixed to either participant. Consistent with expectations, the tracks are dense, multi-layered affairs teeming with detail.

With a classic Elektro Guzzi groove of pumping kick drums, claps, and swishing hi-hats animating the material, “Bamba” soars into view, the metronomic drive of its tribal pulse nicely ornamented with wonky synthesizer flourishes that've got Vogel's fingerprints all over them; it's the hardest-grooving of the four and all the more appealing for being so. “Cosmic Heat” weds a punchy 4/4 strut to a lurching, slow-motion overlay, the sound design here packed with sing-song melodic figures and smeared industrial brush-strokes.

A heavy bottom end underpins “Co-Exist,” the lurching, ten-ton groove offset by dubbed-out waves of electronic textures and bleepy synth accents, whereas “Plenkel,” in its jittery wonkiness, comes closest to resembling a standard Vogel production. Regardless, listeners hungry for the trio's kinetic beat thrust will find it; others eager for more of Vogel's idiosyncratic take on electronic production will come away satisfied too.

April 2020