FELIX
KUBIN UND DAS MINERALORCHESTER – music for theatre and radio play
(CD,
dekorder)
Some weeks ago I finally made the step and purchased
“Uncle Meat” by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, a double CD of
almost all instrumental music that is, at least for me, hard to decipher at
all means. And this here album of tracks by Felix Kubin and the Mineral
Orchestra has the same kind of apocryptic enigma to me. The more I listen to
the music and lyrics and the compositions, the harder I find it to even
start to describe what it is about. I could fall for the easy way and start
to announce what I hear, something along the lines of: rhythmically
challenging, fascinating electronic tracks, that sound like something really
old has been taken to be mangled in laptops and re-generated into something
new, with lyrics here and there, spoken words, sounding off all kinds of
synthies and keyboards, always in a sophomore and serious manner, song based
yet spreading out to less fixed forms of music as well, et cetera, et
cetera. But I feel, this kind of catalogue wouldn’t help anybody.
This CD contains parts of scores written for three
soundtracks, two for theatrical plays and one for a radio play, which on the
one hand perhaps partly explains the high-brow and “artistic” (let’s
call it that for lack of a better word) approach the tracks have. Meaning,
that they sound very well though through and cleverly crafted, in all the
avant-garde fashion of meta-levels and multi-sidedviewpoints, that is
obviously necessary when spending a lot of money, time and effort on
something purely intellectual, such as dramatic art. On the other hand, the
tracks all spread a certain, and then quite varying emotionality. There are
melancholic tracks and happy ones, some remind of the Roaring Twenties
shows, some of the circus, some of late night diseasters.
Friends of state of the art techno and high flying
digital sound concepts will definitely not be friends with this album. Also
the large number of people looking for a certain groove won’t be able to
take this one home. The listener has to have a more artistic and detached
approach to music, able to see art as it is and as a worthwhile endeavour in
itself even without an entertainment factor. Which is not to say that the
music on here does not entertain, highly so it does, but the main set is one
definitely more focused on an effect than on an atmosphere. Therefore a
listener able to secure a meta-level of reception, will definitely enjoy a
lot on here more. And I even started talking about the male Russian choirs
coming up or the spastic big band. After all, maybe all I want to say is,
that this is a difficult album – and meant to be that way.
