GINTAS K – lengvai / 60 x one minute audio colours of 2kHz sound

(CD, Cronica)

Gintas K presents both the most exciting and the most tedious example of what the label calls “experimental digital post techno” on this double release. But it is also sort of like the victory of the organic and naturally flowing musical structure over the completely structural and structurally constructed approach towards music. But, let’s get things straight beforehand and say first things first.

“Lengvai”, CD one in this double back, consists of five richly structured and multilayered pieces of evolving sounds that build, grow and rise from various subtle sounds into impressive walls of sounds, building up a beat and a groove together with an exciting transition of noises, however small they might be at the beginning, into big parts of accomplished electronic composition. Gintas K keeps the balance between the minimal monotony and the flourishing growth of sounds perfectly while he also keeps an eye on the development of the overall track. Within these rather long tracks (except for the title intro track) you suddenly find yourself groving to beats so tiny and reduced that they are almost inaudible. A stroke of genius far above the multitudes of superficial electronic acts within the cologne school of minimal techno and thereby probably the best electronic whatever release up to now.

From the strictly noise turned to percussion complexity of “Külgrinda”, where sharply cut white noise, digital clicks and other ticks form a post electronic rhythm group constantly shifting and changing beat patterns, adding complexity and syncopation, to the long winding bleeps and peeps turning into harmony of “Koto” or “Early Set”, Gintas K shows one of the most audacious yet most harmonic approaches to sound experiments within this genre. When the electric guitar sounds in “Külgrinda” add the opposing layer to the more and more frenzied percussions it is clear that the aim is a fusion of old and new approaches, forfeiting various styles and ways for blandness and conceptually going straight for the main pathway – even if the result is richly masked and adorned. Especially when that track turns into a burning thunderstorm of percussive noise after about a quarter of an hour before dissolving into nothing quite quickly. It is sharp, witty and keen on one side and natural, organic and harmonic at the other side, both at the same time, with a sharp does of eclecticism to round things up.

The other CD in this package is a completely different thing, though. It is exactly what the title says: 60 times 60 seconds of static electronica, changing after exactly sixty seconds into the next groove, layer, beat or whatever it will be. I never had much of anything for those legendary loop records, where every single line on a vinyl record was a single loop, and things like these. The single pieces don’t get their time to evolve, they stand next to each other like commodities on a supermarket shelf, with no life or development of their own. The transition from one to the next is arbitrary and sharp. Maybe some people like that. With a fitting dose of masochism, it is imaginable. On the other hand, lots of people like lots of things and even more things are imaginable. Anyway, in my book this kind of arbitrary strictness doesn’t count for anything, even if it is theoretically appealing and consequently executed.