BLACK TO
COMM – fractal hair geometry
(CD, dekorder)
Persistence usually pays off after a while, that is, if
you genuinely have got something to offer. Otherwise it is futile. Seeing Black To Comm
announce records to be released all around the planet in more and more
productive fashion makes me feel good, and not just because we have praised
Black To Comm aka Mark Richter’s drones from the first EP he
released on his own label Dekorder. And very much like his music in single
tracks seems stable and compact but offers fascinating dynamics and
movements at closer inspection, his music seen in bigger increments such as
records / albums shows an analogous overall stability but myriads of tiny
movements underneath the surface.
Black To Comm’s signature has always been an unique
density and compactness in sound. His drones stand in the room and in the
listener’s head like a big blob of sounds, that are endlessly changing and
rearranging themselves, but seem to keep the external effects the same.
Compare that to the surface of the sun, for lack of something better, which
shows an incredible variety of shades, eruptions, whirls, cascades and
eruptions, yet seen from afar it is nothing but one big compact ball of
burning matter. This means in effect that the drones on “fractal hair
geometry”, as on the other releases by Black To Comm, find their place as
ambience producers as well as they do offer opportunities to immerse
yourself in the sounds and (attention: overused cliché!) discover all kinds
of exotic landscapes, be the real or in your mind. Don’t worry when the
drone-scapes seem to get heavy or too overpowering, because at times they do
start to work out a heavy traction, they are always elegantly set and with
time will release the listener from its heaviest grips.
The basis of the drones presented on “fractal hair
geometry” are old and vintage organs from reasonably old to quite old to
unbelievably old. How they are processed and distorted and realigned, how
Richter diligently puts layer above layer above layer, sometimes up to fifty
times, makes me think of old professionists from the renaissance or medieval
times. Those carpenters or clothes makers who in years of work put together
a fascinating piece of art in minute work, like a table or desk made from
the tiniest parts of wood, with inlays so small and delicate it seems as if
they would fly away if they could. Those pieces of handicraft that nowadays,
a few hundred years after their completion, still stand out as remarkable
achievements.
The most outstanding and most easily accessible
progression or musical advancement on this album may be the straight 4/4
rhythm on “Leigh Bowery” a tribute to the late artist, But even this,
politically as well as musically straightly denominated and connotaded
rhythmical expression is bent into Black To Comm’s musical territory,
making the pounding beat magically seem to disappear – an effect that is
made by the listener’s ears and their tendency to focus in some things and
level out others – and then realise they are still here. Like a sign on a
wall you walk by everyday that you start to forget that it is there until
the time it is either gone or somebody else or some instant makes you wonder
about it again.
